Kinder, Kindler, Kindlier
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: SSHPDM slash. The third law of motion does not apply to relationships. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Kinder, Kindler, Kindlier

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Snape/Harry/Draco

**Rating: **R

**Warnings:** **Threesome. **Slightly AU from DH in that Snape survives. Profanity, sex, angst.

**Summary: **The third law of motion does not apply to relationships.

**Author's Notes: **This started life as a tiny one-shot, but didn't stay there. It will probably end up being posted in seven or eight parts, perhaps a bit more or a bit less.

**Kinder, Kindler, Kindlier**

"I don't know why I come here."

Severus could hear the mutter well enough, even from across the shop. Potter often seemed to believe that it was his ears and not his throat that Nagini's bite had injured.

Severus pressed his teeth together and continued sorting through the ingredients that needed to be arranged on the shelves. He had believed, before the war ended and his life changed, that it would be a simple thing to keep an apothecary's shop. He could organize the ingredients, the vials, and the cauldrons better than half the poor fools he had seen in the apothecary's shops of Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade.

And then he had opened his own, and realized that his perfect vision had assumed one thing: that all customers were as neat as he was. Instead of tidy perfection, Severus found that wizards and witches entered his shop who seemed to have no concept of the words "privacy," "cleanliness," and "don't touch that." They picked up and fingered rare weeds and flowers, half-crushing them and rubbing off the texture or pollen that the potions which used them depended on. They dropped vials. (Severus would have thought that sharp glass shards, or the possibility of encountering same, was a deterrent to careless handling, but it seemed rather to be a challenge). They tried to bargain down the prices for rare scales, feathers, and eggs, or sneak out with them under their robes, and some of them assumed that his status as a former Death Eater should somehow entitle them to free use of his products.

Severus had learned to deal with them. He had his freedom and the ability to make a living, and that was more than he had dreamed of when he opened his eyes in St. Mungo's for the first time after the war. Compared to customers who knew what they were doing and did it anyway, with a spark of contempt in their eyes that dared him to stop them, Harry Potter was not even an annoyance.

Potter chanted several rapid words under his breath, and Severus felt the air of the shop flicker and change as the wards strengthened. "There," Potter said aloud. "You should be safe from attacks of any kind for the next month, including flung stones, Muggle bombs, fire spells, werewolf bites…" His voice was bored as he listed all the things his specially crafted defensive magic would hold up against. Severus had the impression that he had done this many times before.

He turned around so that he could see Potter more clearly. Potter stood beside the window in the front of the shop, scanning the street with an alertness that Severus knew was more habit than real belief that danger would come along. Three years of Auror training had created a mark on him, after all.

He didn't wear the scarlet robes of the Aurors. At the end of those three years, Potter had astonished most of the wizarding world by declaring that he didn't want to serve the Ministry after all and going his own way to set up a business that specialized in dense and efficient wards for hard-to-protect buildings. Rumor was that even the Ministry had turned to Potter's Protection Agency, though they denied the rumor hotly.

Potter wore Muggle jeans and a large, battered green jumper that Severus didn't wish to inquire into the origins of. He held his wand in one hand, his tongue in more situations than not, and boredom in the corners of his eyes.

Severus cleared his throat. Potter turned to face him. Despite the mutter Severus had heard from him earlier, his expression was smooth and neutral. "Yes?" he asked.

Severus looked at him again. Potter had spoken up for him at the Wizengamot trials. He had been behind—Severus believed, though he could never prove it—a donation of Galleons to Severus's Gringotts vault that allowed him to start up his shop. He regularly came in to renew the wards on the shop and charged much less than Severus knew his work was worth. Throughout everything, he never showed anything but passionless competence, as if he knew that Severus would despise a display of personal emotion. What he felt about Severus's return from death thanks to the antivenin floating in his veins, he had never disclosed.

Despite his past, Severus did not like to think himself an ungrateful man. And he had never thanked Potter.

He took a deep breath and said, "I—appreciate it."

Potter blinked at him. "Appreciate what?" There wasn't even a quickening of interest in his eyes. He seemed to assume that he had misunderstood.

Severus growled, disliking the fact that Potter would force him to speak the words straight out. But he managed to wrestle his tongue under control. If he spoke sharply now, then Potter would turn around and leave the shop, and probably never believe any attempt that Severus made in future to clear the debt between them.

"Thank you," he said. "For—standing up for me. For working for me at a price that I know is discounted." He pondered thanking Potter for the donation, but reminded himself again that he had no absolute proof of that, and Potter would probably resent being thanked since he'd chosen anonymity on his own. "For helping me," he finished, "though you have no reason to do so."

Potter's eyes widened, and continued widening, until Severus thought he was going to faint. He did put out one hand on the wall as though to catch himself, and lightly shook his head. "Why would you do that?" he asked, his voice distant. "You hate me."

"I do not hate you," Severus corrected carefully. It was something he had thought of before, when he wondered why he let Potter return to the shop the next month to renew the wards, instead of refusing or at least insisting on paying full price. (He would be stupid to give up Potter's services completely when he was the best in the business). "I have disliked you, yes. But you have fought for me and benefited me since the war. And you know some of the secrets I would not willingly have shared if I were not close to death, and yet you do not mock me for them." Severus felt his face burn. He had panicked when he thought that his memories of Lily might die with him; it would be like her suffering a second death. So he had called them forth from within his head and given them to Potter.

It had been a mistake, but he had not suffered for it. That was a kindness he had not expected.

Potter spent some time considering Severus's face with a methodical gaze, as if he assumed that this would turn out to be a trick or a trap any moment. Then he nodded. "All right," he said, and he was almost as blank as he had been before. "Thanks for letting me know. I'll see you next month."

He slipped out the door, leaving Severus to stare after him. He wondered why he should be so disappointed. Surely that was the best reaction Potter could have to the statements Severus had just made. An emotional one would have embarrassed them both; one of scorn or hatred would have made Severus regret speaking at all.

Then why did he feel as if he held out a hand to a wild bird and watched it fly away?

*

_It's stupid to focus on something so small. Go to sleep._

And Harry should have. He should have shut his eyes and slipped immediately, blankly, into dreamland. It wasn't hard. He had a lot of practice at being blank during the day when he was casting the same wards over and over again, or listening to the high-flown dreams of people who wanted something they could never afford, before he knocked them back down to what was practical again.

But instead, he lay there with his eyes shut but his mind racing and dancing and, God help him, practically _sparkling _over Snape's words.

Harry hadn't done what he'd done for Snape because he expected thanks. He'd done it because he'd been wrong, horribly wrong, and this was the only way he knew to make up for it. Snape wouldn't want gifts, or apologies, or deep heart-to-heart talks about his mum, which Harry might have tried if he'd thought there was any chance of it working; he still wanted to know so much. But instead, he'd handed over what he thought Snape would take, and he'd been right. Going to his shop every month was just a duty like so many others, like going to the Burrow for dinner once a week and checking all the post he got for poisons or Dark spells.

But now, Snape had spoken.

It was a tiny bit of kindness, but Harry didn't care. His life had faded into mindless, meaningless routine, with the only blessing the fact that at least no Dark Lord was trying to kill him. He had tried to date, and only ended up making idle conversation and perfunctory love with the women he took out. He had tried to get up some new adventure with his friends, but they were settled down into marriage and work, and didn't have time. So Harry had resigned himself to the state of the world and had expected things to continue like that until he was found dead of boredom someday.

If this had changed, though, what else might not change?

Harry saw his life as if through clear glass for the first time since he'd broken free of the Ministry, and despised himself. What the fuck was he _doing_? He could have reached out and swept away all the cobwebs and obstacles at any time, but he hadn't wanted to. It had seemed like too much effort. He wasn't depressed; he wasn't undergoing any trauma. He was just _continuing._

_Well, tomorrow, I'm going to stop._

*

"You ought to eat something."

Draco winced, but kept his face calm and still as he stared out the window. "I'm not hungry," he said.

"The ending of one love affair isn't the ending of the world, you know," his mother said in a slightly superior voice, as if she thought that Draco might not know that. Draco heard her shoving cups and plates around on the table behind him, where she was setting down another large tray of food he wouldn't eat. "Especially the ending of a love affair with someone who would be an utterly unsuitable candidate for marriage."

Draco set his teeth and said nothing. Yes, of course he couldn't have married Pansy, who was already married and who had just moved to France with her husband. But his parents' intense focus on marriage and grandchildren made Draco want to run away to France and show up on Pansy's doorstep just to spite them all.

"You ought to eat something," Narcissa said. "Then you ought to go out and fly on your broom. That would get some blood running through your veins again." _And get me out from under your feet, _Draco thought, silently supplying the words she would never say. "But remember to stay away from the front of the house."

"What's happening at the front of the house?" Draco asked listlessly. There was a small blue flower extending climbing tendrils around the edge of the window he looked out. He thought about clipping its vine so it would fall backwards and learn something about the hopelessness of hope, but it seemed like too much effort.

"Oh, Potter's there, putting up wards," his mother said, and pushed something aside on the table, probably a dish cover. Draco smelled a tantalizing scent of fruit and meat, but he kept his back stubbornly turned. "I know you don't like each other," his mother lightly chattered on, "so I thought I should lessen the chance that you'd meet."

_Potter._

The name called up old hatreds for Draco, but it had been so long since they had seen each other that they were dusty, faded things, like some of the tapestries in the back rooms of the Manor no longer used for guests. Draco tried to remember some of the things that Potter had done him to him in Hogwarts, and discovered that those had faded, too. He shook his head.

_Definitely too long since he's been around to add some kind of variety to my life. I need to visit him and renew those memories._

Draco turned around and reached for the plate of food. No sense in falling over in the middle of a confrontation with Potter, who would be quick to pounce on such weakness.

"There you are," his mother said, and gave him a restrained smile before she headed out of the room. "I knew this couldn't last forever," Draco heard her murmur.

Draco smiled nastily to himself as he ate the delicately baked chicken and followed it with a fresh bowl of strawberries and whipped cream. _Don't count on that, Mother. As soon as I've heard a few new insults from Potter's lips, I plan to return to feeling sorry for myself all I like. And you won't even be able to complain, because I'll have done a few things you wanted me to do._

*

"You're lucky that we don't require a better standard of dress in our servants, Potter."

Harry blinked and looked down. He was standing on a ladder to reach the higher windows that had to be warded; he had offered to come up the stairs, but the Malfoys had utterly refused to let him in the Manor. Harry once would have accepted that calmly. Since the change Snape had made in his life, he rolled his eyes and whispered sarcastic comments to himself.

And he wasn't about to tamely bear the insults from Draco Malfoy, who stood below the ladder, eying his tattered grey jumper with disdain.

"I wasn't aware that you gave your servants clothes at all," he called back. "So I'm almost certainly exhibiting better taste than they are."

Malfoy blinked, as though he hadn't thought it likely Harry would talk back and so had no retorts in place to deal with that. Harry turned back to the work he was doing and drew the line of a ward from one side of the window to another. Light followed the line. Harry focused on it and cast the spell that would endow the light with defensive properties.

The ward flashed as its purpose entered its "brain," and then grew as bright as a meteorite before fading into nothingness. Harry smiled. He enjoyed the way that wards seemed to learn what he required of them in a set of stages, rather than being cast all at once and finished. That was another thing he hadn't allowed himself to think about in a long time, he realized. He would think about the idea and then dismiss it, telling himself that the wards weren't alive and so couldn't learn.

"Did you knit that jumper yourself," Malfoy said, apparently deciding that now was as good a time as any to add more of his irrelevant words, "or did you steal it from a homeless Muggle?"

"That's a third-class insult, Malfoy." Harry squinted, and decided that the wards he'd already cast sheltered this window sufficiently. He waved his wand, and the ladder rose and shifted sideways, while Harry clung to it to ensure he didn't fall off. The next window had older glass than the first one, and Harry studied it with an expert eye. It would be a bit harder to protect. Wards set up certain vibrations in the objects that they were attached to, and were likely to shatter anything exceptionally fragile. Harry adjusted the mental list of spells he would have to use and began to cast.

"My insults are _always_ first-class, Potter." Malfoy's voice had frozen. "And my spells, too."

A moment later, Harry felt the ladder tremble beneath him. He held onto it firmly with his left hand and looked down.

Malfoy was hurling hexes at the base of the ladder. Harry watched with a smile and waited for him to notice the truth.

Finally, Malfoy stopped casting, stared for a minute, and then cast a detection spell. When it finished and showed him its results—invisible to other eyes—his jaw dropped, and he looked up at Harry with a betrayed expression. "This ladder is warded," he said.

"Of course," Harry said. "I always do that, since the time I had an encounter with a Crup who wasn't fairly trained to accept strangers and thought the fastest way to bring me down was biting through a piece of wood." He shrugged and turned back to his work.

Malfoy didn't leave, to Harry's surprise. The Malfoy he remembered from school, or thought he remembered, would have sulked away. But he didn't speak for long moments, either. When he did, it was about something entirely different.

"Why did you come here and help us?"

Harry glanced down again. Malfoy stood a sufficient distance from the foot of the ladder that Harry thought he wasn't going to try tampering with it again. But he had his arms folded, and a bored expression on his face. Harry wondered if perhaps the question wasn't a distraction from some new tactic of getting to him, as he had thought, but a genuine one.

_Because you pay me _was the answer on his lips, but he stopped and thought. No, his real reasons were closer to the reasons he had for helping Snape. And he thought Malfoy deserved to know that.

"Because I didn't think many other people would," he answered, drawing the first line of the new ward around the window he was standing next to. "I know how badly the defenses were damaged here during the war. I thought you probably needed new ones." He could have said something about how they'd held out against contacting him much longer than he'd thought they would, but decided that was also something likely to cause an argument.

And, wonder of wonders, he wanted to talk to Malfoy more than he wanted to argue with him. Snape's kindness was a new thing. Harry would try extending that kindness to Malfoy and seeing what happened. It would at least be new.

"Won't your friends hate it that you helped us?" Malfoy sounded a bit hopeful now, perhaps because he was thinking of the Weasleys' reaction and assuming it would be painful for Harry.

"I don't think so," Harry said. "They're more mature than that. At least, I hope so," he added, thinking with a sigh of some of the things Ron had said about Malfoy in the last fortnight. Ron was still an Auror, and Harry didn't think he'd come into contact with the Malfoys since the trials that had set Narcissa and Draco free and put Lucius under house arrest, but he still ranted about them at times.

Malfoy laughed. "You _hope_. You should have chosen a different set of friends if you wanted to fulfill that hope."

Harry rolled his eyes. "As if you were much better," he said, and drew the second line. The wards sealed themselves in a circle, flashing red and gold. Harry waited until the last possible trace of light died away before he started drawing the third line. When he didn't, there were flaws or breaks in the wards themselves, and that could be deadly, given a place that was already vulnerable.

"I told you," Malfoy said, sounding injured, "I always had a better class of insult. And I never started the fights we got into."

Harry stared down at him. "Right," he drawled, and then found that one word seemed to have used up all his incredulity. He laughed instead. "You started at least half of them," he said. "Why were you so obsessed with following us around and finding out what we did, anyway? It's not as though we were planning to hurt you."

"Most of the time," Malfoy corrected. "I seem to remember a time when Crabbe and Goyle suddenly turned into you."

"We still weren't trying to hurt you." Harry set up the final ward and smiled as the glass in the window shook lightly, then settled back into place. That was a sign that it was well-protected. "We thought you were the Heir of Slytherin, actually, and we were trying to find out what you knew about the Chamber of Secrets."

Malfoy said nothing. Harry looked down to see why and found him staring up with an absurdly flattered look.

"You thought I was the Heir of Slytherin," Malfoy murmured. "Really? The Heir?" He was obviously trying out the title to see if it fit.

Harry raised his left hand from the ladder to clamp it over his lips, trying to look as if he was stifling a yawn. He suspected that laughing maniacally right now would destroy whatever chance he had to make peace with Malfoy.

Malfoy shook himself out of the trance at last and stared up accusingly. "Well, that time you _meant _to hurt me," he snapped. "If I was the Heir and you'd found out, you would have reported me to the Aurors and let them put me in Azkaban."

"Besides the fact that I don't think they put children in Azkaban," Harry said, clutching the ladder again as it floated across the front of the house towards the next window, "yes, of course we would have reported you if it had been you. You were Petrifying people and trying to kill them."

"It was in the service of—" Malfoy began, and then shut up.

Harry looked down again, and saw that Malfoy had turned the color of the kind of smelly cheese Hermione was always trying to make Ron eat, and was staring at his hands.

"Yeah," Harry said softly. "It's not so easy to speak up for Voldemort's ideals when Voldemort tortured you, huh?"

Malfoy lifted his eyes in what Harry supposed he could see as an appeal if he wanted to. And he could choose the way he wanted to answer it. He could turn back to his wards and go on with his work, as he would have done yesterday. Before Snape had shown him a bit of kindness and changed the world.

He cast the spell that let him slide swiftly down the ladder instead, and landed right beside Malfoy. Malfoy started away from him, and kept a careful eye on Harry's wand.

_Sensible, _Harry acknowledged. _More sensible than what I'm going to do. _He reached out and put a hand on Malfoy's shoulder. "It's all right," he said quietly. "We've both grown up since then, but we both lived through it. I saw visions of Voldemort when he wasn't careful. I saw you through my scar. I know that you didn't want to torture them, that you only did it because it was them or you."

Malfoy stared at him with his mouth wide open, the expression he'd had when Harry came to the Manor the summer after the war to return his wand. Then he whirled and ran away into the house.

Harry blinked after him, then shrugged. He reckoned that not all the reaching out he might do would be as successful as Snape's.

_But I'll get better with practice, _he thought as he floated back up to the ladder to his former position. _Maybe it's time to start dating again._


	2. Chapter 2

"And then he _dared _to speak to me about the Dark Lord," Draco said, slamming his mug into the table as if he assumed that one or both of them should break under the treatment. "And about Hogwarts. As though those wounds have healed!"

Severus said nothing. He had his back turned to Draco for a good reason: because his expression would probably either drive Draco into self-defensive raptures of explanation that Severus had no wish to hear, or because it would frighten him into shutting up and leaving. And Severus still enjoyed Draco's visits, despite his whining.

At the moment, he was checking his latest shipment of carbuncles for flaws. The dim red stones sparked and shone as he turned them in the light, but few of them had the structural integrity that was necessary to so many potions. Severus's mouth tightened with annoyance as he set the first few cracked ones aside. He sometimes wondered if his suppliers sent him a higher proportion of flawed stones on purpose, to settle imaginary scores from the war, but he doubted that he could ever prove it, even if it was so.

"Severus! Are you listening to me?"

_Perhaps granting him permission to call me by my first name was a mistake. _But still less could Severus imagine Draco calling him by his last name, the way Potter did, or referring to him as "professor" when he hadn't held the rank for years. He turned around and frowned less forbiddingly than he wished he could. "One can hardly avoid listening," he said, "when you fill this room with your voice."

Draco leaned back and gestured around at the room above the shop that was all the living space Severus had. It was a dusty, dim place filled with crates of supplies, barrels that Severus intended to place in the shop below soon, and rejected ingredients he needed to ship back to their suppliers. Cobwebs obscured the one window, and boxes sat on the chairs. "Why don't you move to someplace larger?" Draco asked. "And get a larger table? My feet ache from kicking the legs all the time."

Severus set his mouth. Most of the time, Draco seemed to understand that not everyone had as much money as he did, and he refrained from referring to the size or appointments of Severus's room. But this time, he was more self-absorbed than usual, whining about everything from the conversation with Potter to the (inevitable) ending of his love affair with the former Miss Parkinson, and Severus was not inclined to be so forgiving.

_Speaking to Potter did me more good than I believed it would, _he thought. _It is time to see if the same cannot happen if I speak my mind to Draco._

"What do you imagine a larger room would cost, Draco?" he asked quietly. "Especially when many people would be reluctant to lend space to a former Death Eater?"

"Well, don't rent, then," Draco said, with a little flap of his hand and the uncomfortable expression on his face that he seemed to get every time the topic of money came up. "Buy a house. Then you'd be able to do anything you liked with the property, and no one could complain."

Severus laughed without amusement. "And that is a fantasy that shows how sheltered you are. Where am I to get the Galleons to buy this house? And the furniture to fill it? And, as I suppose you would demand in your next fantasy, the cauldrons for my private lab?"

Draco shook his head and stared down at the mug of Firewhisky in his hands, his eyes haunted and his brow furrowed. He avoided Severus's eyes as if Severus intended to destroy him with a glance. "I don't know," he mumbled. "I was just thinking that it could happen, and—and then I'd like visiting you more often, that's all."

"The temptation of your continual presence is no prize," Severus, more bluntly than he might have were he not so irritated, and turned to his sorting again. There were two fine carbuncles in the next handful. He set them aside with the other unflawed ones, and that made seven.

Draco stared at him with wide eyes, and then frowned. "Sir?" he asked, turning back to a more respectful mode of address now that he thought he might be in trouble. It was exactly the same as he had done in school, and Severus experienced a mingled wave of nausea and weariness.

_Has he grown up at all since then?_

The man he saw before him now was not an adult, no matter how tall he might be. He had made a career of feeling sorry for himself since the war and starting love affairs that were doomed to failure—with married lovers, with lovers who were only interested in his money, with former friends who would fuck him out of pity. And what was worse, Severus thought, his resentment building like a dark wave, was that Draco _knew _that. He was intelligent enough to describe exactly how he was fucking himself over, during the few nights when he got so drunk in Severus's presence that he became honest.

But he wanted to have an excuse to wallow and sulk and not move on to doing anything more worthwhile with his life. And he did have it, because his mother would hint and sigh but not actually attempt to change him, and Lucius was too busy dreaming of future prestige to notice his son's present troubles.

"Listen to me, Draco," Severus said, and he did not know if he was speaking more because he wanted to see Draco do _something _with his life, or to relieve his own feelings. "You are nothing more at the moment than a spoiled, rich brat who doesn't know how to count Galleons, use your skills to earn yourself a living, be a generous lover, or anything else."

Draco's mouth fell open. Severus did not enjoy the opportunity to count his tonsils.

Then Draco shut his mouth and began to splutter. There were words in there like "father" and "war" and "trust," but Severus didn't enjoy the chance to listen to them, either. He knew the excuses Draco would make.

They were all based on fear. Severus had suffered from the same crippling lack of courage after the war, the temptation to huddle in his house and never go outside it so that no one could taunt him. In his case, he hadn't been able to afford the luxury because he had had to work and earn money to keep food in his mouth and a roof over his head. But Draco had been able to do exactly as he liked, and it was that which had corrupted him.

"You _can_ improve," Severus told him fiercely. "That is the maddening thing. Unlike Potter in Potions, you have talent. You can be better than you are, greater. But you refuse, because you might fail. If you did as you should, if you once made proper use of your gifts, then you would not recognize yourself. Fear controls you, not the desire to live a full life that you would like to pretend you have but which is being opposed by other people. Right now, no one cares enough about you to oppose your wishes, because of what you have made of yourself."

Draco's mouth gaped again. He shut it more quickly this time and shook his head. "You don't know the vile things that they say to me when they meet me in Diagon Alley," he said.

"Yes," Severus said. "Words, and nothing else. You have done nothing that requires more. And that means that the insults linger in your mind more than they would if you had good work to counterbalance them, the consciousness of something greater that they could not touch and could not corrupt."

Draco shook his head again. "There's nothing I can do," he said. "Not when the world hates me so much."

Severus stared at Draco, then gestured around the room. "This is not a large shop," he said. "There are some people who will never buy from me. But I have achieved a place that will give me a living, despite the number of people convinced I was a traitor and the worst Headmaster the school had ever seen. Do not tell me that success is impossible when the world hates you, Draco."

"I don't know how to do this," Draco said, lowering his head and whining as though he expected Severus to demand a success of him the next day.

And that was when Severus discovered that, after all, he had some spark of kindness left under the gruffness that survival had made necessary.

"Then I will help you," he said gently.

Draco stared up at him. "You said—"

"Find your will first," Severus added hastily, turning away. He would not be a rescue service for Draco, another person he could depend on and then accuse when they wouldn't carry him everywhere he wanted to go. "Decide what you want to do. Then come back to me and we'll talk about it."

*

Potter was at the Manor again, doing the wards on the back windows this time. Draco stood behind one of those windows, wrapped under a Disillusionment Charm so that Potter wouldn't see him, and watched him with a slow, burning resentment.

Potter was concentrating on the hang of the ward, his frown purely detached, purely speculative. Draco had watched him all morning and had expected to see him show hatred at some point, because of course he would not want to work for the Malfoys. But Potter had acted as distantly cool and professional as Severus did when he sold ingredients to someone who mentioned personal grudges while in his shop.

_But I'm the one Severus offered to help._

In the end, that was so true that Draco _had _to drop the Charm and wave to get Potter's attention. Potter glanced in through the window, blinked—Draco hoped he was wondering why he hadn't spotted Draco the first time he looked into the room—and then nodded and waved back as if he assumed they were exchanging friendly greetings.

"You idiot," Draco said, then realized Potter probably couldn't hear him through the thick glass pane. He flicked his wand and temporarily banished it.

"_Malfoy_," Potter said, with a glare that he probably imagined could fry Draco in his tracks. It was more intimidating than Draco wanted to admit, of course, but that was part of Severus's instructions: not to allow people who expressed dislike to affect him. "I was binding the wards to the glass."

"What does that matter to me?" Draco drawled. It was a perfect drawl, he thought. He hadn't used one like it in years. He had tried to drawl his farewell to Pansy, to make her see what she was missing by choosing her husband over him, but she had only laughed. It was good to know he hadn't lost his touch. "I wanted to tell you that I'm going to start my own potions business."

Potter blinked at him, then shrugged. "Congratulations, I reckon. But why did you want me to know that?"

_Because you're not the only successful one, _Draco wanted to say. _Because Severus still speaks to me and not you, even though I know that you go over and renew his wards every month and try to act like you're his friend. _But Potter would laugh at the words, so Draco sneered, curled his lip up, and said, "Because you're here."

"Fine," Potter said. "Can you put the glass back now? I shouldn't leave half-finished wards hanging about too long."

_Damn him. _Draco leaned insistently forwards. "I thought I might partner with Severus. He offered to help me, you know."

A glint of interest in Potter's eyes before he turned his head away and tried to use the same bored expression from before. "What does that matter to me?"

"It does," Draco said. "It must. You go and renew the wards on his business every month, and you wouldn't do that if you weren't interested in him."

Potter's hand gripped the top of the ladder as if he were about to wrench it off, but he didn't respond to Draco's taunting, instead simply cocking his head and raising his eyebrows. "Good luck to you, and good luck to him. Maybe you'll even last a single day before you insult one of your clients so badly that they tell everyone else to avoid your shop."

Draco straightened up with an offended snap of his shoulders, and wished he was wearing a cloak so that he could billow it around himself and look more dramatic. "I know enough not to insult my clients!"

"Oh, really?" Potter surveyed him with lazy eyes. He had released his grip on the ladder, Draco noted with an outrage that he couldn't define. It was as though Potter was more confident when he could insult Draco. "You've insulted me and tried to make me care about your little, insignificant affairs even though I'm putting the wards on the Manor. It would be so easy for me to leave a little gap or loophole in the defenses that someone else would notice, but you never would, because you would be looking at it from the inside…"

Draco realized he was gaping, and quickly shut his mouth. "You wouldn't do that," he said, and really, he was _almost _sure. "You would never be able to get away with that."

"Really?" Potter lifted his wand. "I'm better than anyone else, which is why your parents hired me. I wouldn't be able to do the potion-brewing you can. Why would you assume that you can recognize the flaws in my wards?"

Draco stared at Potter. Potter looked back with a clear and deadly expression that didn't harmonize at all with what Draco knew about him.

Potter was a hero. He'd proven it with the way he spoke up at the Wizengamot trials and worked to make sure that everyone except the very worst Death Eaters was cleared. He was patient, and kind. He wouldn't do something like this.

"You wouldn't do that," Draco said, speaking out of his knowledge, and hoping against hope that Potter wasn't like some of his friends who had changed since school and now cared about things they never used to care about. "Not really. You might threaten it because you're disappointed, but what you're disappointed about I don't know. And I haven't insulted you," he added belatedly. "All I did was tell you about my good fortune and take away the glass. Here, you can have it back." He waved his wand, and the pane returned to the window. It probably brought the last remnants of the wards Potter had been casting with it, because Draco was just _that _good.

Potter stared at him from behind the glass. Draco looked back with some triumph, and then Potter began casting the wards again.

Draco went to the library and stared brooding into the fire, wondering about two things. Why had Potter cared so much that Draco was going into business with Severus? As he'd said, it really shouldn't have mattered to him.

And why had Draco wanted him to know? He hadn't even told his parents yet, because he knew they would ask questions about how it led towards marriage that he wasn't ready to answer yet.

Before now, those questions would have circled around his head like water around a drain, and occupied so much of his attention that he couldn't do anything else. But now, thanks to Severus, he had something else to think about, and he moved on to potions and the kinds that he would brew first, the kinds that he would be able to make from the ingredients Severus had available in his shop, and the kinds that there would be most demand for.

When he emerged from his study clutching a list of names, Potter was already gone.

*

_You're being ridiculous._

Harry sighed as he slid off his cloak and hung it on a peg next to the door, followed by his formal robes, lined with leather and dragonhide so that he would be less injured if a ward exploded while he was working. He kicked off his boots next and went to sit in a chair in the middle of the room, his usual seat when he wanted to think about something uncomfortable, including his mistakes.

He glanced once at the blocked Floo connection—Hermione was supposed to call him about getting together for dinner tonight—but ended up leaving it closed. Hermione would send an owl or Apparate in if she couldn't firecall him, and it would give Harry a little more private time to sort out his feelings.

He shut his eyes and concentrated on his breathing, a trick the one Mind-Healer he had visited after the war had taught him. It was the only trick he had taught Harry, because the next time Harry arrived at his office, he'd found what seemed like the entire reporter population of London waiting for him.

Harry growled and forced away the memory of that betrayal. He wanted to think about why he'd reacted so strongly when Malfoy had told him that he and Snape were going into business.

So they were. So what? It would probably lead to a higher level of notoriety for a while, but in the end, it was likely to increase the profit for both of them, and it meant that Malfoy was taking charge of his life in the way that Snape's words had encouraged Harry to take charge of his own. There would probably be some attacks, but Harry had confidence in his wards; the attacks would annoy Snape and Malfoy, but not injure them.

_Maybe Snape won't even need me to come back anymore, if the shop does so well that some of their customers develop an interest in protecting it._

Panic gripped his throat at the thought, and Harry had to pull at the collar of his shirt before he could come to terms with it.

He didn't want that to happen. And he didn't want Snape to forbid him to come back because Malfoy didn't like him, either. He had to be in the shop sometimes, had to listen to Snape's sullen words and watch the ingredients arranged in barrels and on tables. He didn't learn anything from that; this wasn't some desperate attempt to teach himself potions five years too late, because he knew he wouldn't be able to. But the desire was there anyway.

_Why?_

After a short time of pondering the question, Harry decided it didn't matter, not much. He probably wouldn't be able to answer it, and while he spent time brooding on the _possible _answers, Snape and Malfoy would move into their partnership and he would be left outside.

Maybe it was enough that Snape's words had been the ones that gave him an interest in life outside his daily routine again, and that meant he wanted to continue the association.

Harry did something he could never have dreamed of doing two days ago, and seized a piece of parchment and wrote down the first suggestion that came to mind. He signed his name so that Snape would know it wasn't a prank and then ran out to find a post-owl.

Only when he came back home did he realize what he'd done, and wince when he thought of what would probably happen.

But it was done now. And at least if Snape rejected the proposal, that might provide the sting necessary to force Harry into doing something else with his life. He'd felt more wide-awake since Snape's kindness to him, he'd talked and thought about doing great things, but he hadn't actually begun them.

_Close one possibility, and others have to open, _Harry told himself firmly as he began to make dinner.


	3. Chapter 3

Severus stood staring at the letter for some time. He would have liked to pretend that the handwriting was too messy for him to interpret, but he didn't have that recourse, thanks to previous messages from Potter arranging the day when he would be by Severus's shop to renew the wards.

"Draco?" he called at last. "Come here and tell me what you make of this."

Draco bounced out of the area of the shop still draped with cloth and busy with the sound of hammers. Yes, there were many people who wouldn't even listen to a proposal to expand the building from the dread Severus Snape, but there were plenty of others who were willing to work for Malfoy Galleons. Now Draco gave him an eager look. "Yes, Severus? An order from one of the suppliers?" He picked up the letter before Severus could give him a caution about its contents.

He read in silence, though Severus thought he could see a shifting and prickling on the back of his head where his hair was surely standing up. Then he gripped the edges of the letter as if he would tear it in half.

"Do not," Severus said sharply. "We haven't made a decision yet."

"What decision is there to _make_?" Draco waved the letter back and forth as though he were fanning the carbuncles in the window display. "Harry bloody Potter, offering to go into partnership with us? This has to be a joke."

"It is not," Severus said. "He no longer makes those kinds of jokes." He frowned at the letter again. One phrase caught his eye: _can understand if you don't want to, but I hope you will._

The words practically bled sincerity. Severus shuddered slightly at the thought of that imaginary blood flooding his shop.

On the one hand, he hardly wanted to be in daily contact with Potter if he was going to do that sort of thing. On the other, if he refused, Potter would probably come and beg him to change his mind in person, and his earnest expression would be worse.

"But even if we accepted him, how could we accommodate him?" Draco fumed. "We'd have to carry mostly defensive potions and ingredients for them, because people would expect it, to fit in with the wards. And if we didn't, then it wouldn't really be a _partnership, _just two businesses occupying the same building."

Severus closed his eyes. In reality, that idea appealed to him, though he could see why it wouldn't to Draco.

Potter's fame as a ward-maker would be enough to induce a new, better class of customers to enter the shop. And when they were there, what might they not be induced to buy? Severus knew that a large part of customer mentality was convenience. Perhaps someone who wanted carbuncles would put off buying them because of cost or lack of time to enter Diagon Alley, but when he was coming to bargain for new wards, he would see them, for a good price, from the corner of his eye, and think about it, and buy them. Or he would buy one of the many potions that could be made from them, and which Draco would have on display in his portion of the shop.

If they worked as separate businesses, they would have a certain degree of independence from one another, but could benefit one another at the same time. The possibilities hypnotized Severus.

"We will have to work out a profit-sharing agreement, you and I, Draco," he murmured. "And we will decide in _advance _what portion of the rent Potter will pay. With his prices and his popularity, he will be able to afford anything we charge."

Silence. It was the kind of silence that Draco would use to give him a stare. Severus knew that, and did not truly resent it.

"You're not _serious_," Draco breathed, but seemed to realize that Severus was indeed so. His voice rose a little. "You can't be! How can you be? We wouldn't survive a day without trying to hex each other!"

Severus did open his eyes then, in order to glare. "I would hope that you have passed beyond that stage, Draco."

Draco folded his arms and looked stiff, then resigned, then ridiculous, and then back to stiff-faced again. Severus suspected that Draco was changing his own thoughts almost too fast to keep up with, at once wanting to confront Severus's accusation and to make sure that there was no way Potter would be invited into the shop. Severus waited, finger on the letter and eyes on Draco's face.

"I wouldn't hex him," Draco said at last, in a voice as unconvincing as a child's first glamour. "But he might hex me."

"You have told me that he did not hex you during the conversation you had at your Manor," Severus said, "the conversation that ultimately made you decide to come to me."

"Yes, but maybe he's changed his mind since then," Draco said desperately.

Severus lifted his head. He should have heard it before. There was a note in Draco's voice that had once been familiar to him, when he was a teacher speaking with students who were in constant competition—as they saw it—with other students for good marks, the favor of Professors, notice in Quidditch tryouts, parental love. "Draco, are you _jealous _of him?"

Draco hunched his shoulders and looked away.

Severus spoke in a quiet, forceful voice. He might have walked away from this argument ordinarily, disgusted by the pettiness of the emotions involved, but it was flattering to know that Draco considered _his _regard something important enough to get upset about. "Draco, you will always come first in my estimation."

"I will?" Draco looked at him with desperate hopefulness that let Severus know he had guessed correctly.

"Of course." Severus stepped forwards, wondering as he did so what the best gesture would be. They were not close enough for an embrace—and Draco might take that wrong in more ways than one—and Severus thought a handshake would make him seem too distant. He settled for patting Draco on the back. From the rapt way Draco's eyes followed him, he doubted that Draco would take the gesture amiss. "Your Potions skill is greater. You are more like me. We are both Slytherins, that is inevitable. And you were the one who came up with the idea of going into business with me first. Potter is only copying you."

_A few diplomatic lies cannot hurt._

Draco's face at once shone like the moon. "That's _right_," he said triumphantly. "He would never have thought of this if not for me."

"I believe you are correct." Severus Summoned the letter and stood studying, puzzling over the words. They were simple, but that same bleeding sincerity was even stronger on a second reading. Yes, Potter really did write as if he wanted to be part of some grand experience that Draco and Severus would deprive him of.

_Why? I cannot believe that he feels such affection for Draco after years apart and then a few meetings._

The other possibility was even more unbelievable, but it seemed nonetheless to be the true one. Severus had thought Potter ungrateful for his kindness the other day. That blank face, though, those wide eyes—what if they were only meant to conceal a soul as shrinking, in its own way, of encountering disapproval as Severus's own?

_He wants to be with me._

Severus knew then that he was going to accept Potter's offer, no matter what bribe he had to offer Draco to make him agree. For Draco to want his approval was flattering, but at least that had a basis: their years together as teacher and student.

For Potter to want it, when he had resisted the efforts Severus made to protect him and chastise him in school?

_Intoxicating._

*

Draco watched Potter from the corner of his eye as he expanded the shop's walls with waves of his wand. It seemed that among the wards he knew were ones that would actually raise bricks and stone and make them hover in the air, waiting for the mortar or other materials to finish and join them. Potter had preferred that to trying to find builders who wouldn't blurt out the truth about the Boy-Who-Lived and his new location before they were ready.

Draco could understand that. Intellectually.

His heart, he was starting to think, would always be eleven years old, and it sulked and suspected that Potter was showing off for Severus.

Three blocks hung in the air already. Potter frowned with concentration, and a line of red light sprang from the hanging stones to the ground and then back up again and then down again, grounding itself at Potter's feet, forming an arch. Another stone racketed along to the center of that arch liked a bead on a chain and hung there, quivering. Potter smiled, a slight sheen of sweat on his forehead.

_He wants you to watch, _Draco reminded himself, and turned away. _So the best thing you can do is disappoint him._

He went to the center of the shop, where Severus was considering one of the offers they had received from the few people who—inevitably—knew Potter was here. Apparently the friend of a friend of the Weasleys made sturdy crates and cages of the kind used to transport magical beasts who could be legally sold or traded, and had offered them to Severus for a modest consideration and prominent display of his name. The crates and cages would stand up to the sort of damage that people liked to inflict on shops where two former Death Eaters worked. Severus, though, had said that he was not sure if they would make the best _display _for his merchandise.

"Are you sick of him yet?" Draco asked, jerking his head in the direction of Potter.

Severus seemed to wake slowly, as though he had fallen into a trance and wouldn't have been able to rouse himself from it without Draco's help. He glanced once at Draco, then back at the papers he was considering, then put one finger on a diagram as though to hold his place and gave Draco his attention again. "What do you mean?"

"Look at him," Draco said, pivoting back on one heel in time to see Potter hang two more stones along the same arch of light as that first stone. Draco knew from experience how hard it was to make objects stay that still, and multiple objects all at once—seven, in fact, since Potter still had stones hanging in the air along his other wards. A ripple of envy passed through Draco, and ripples of many other things that he didn't want to name because he knew Potter was _trying _to invoke them. "Doing the most complicated magic he can because he wants people to gape."

Silence. Draco looked back, half-expecting Severus to be lost in his diagrams once more, and prepared to resent it. No one really seemed to concentrate on _Draco_, on what he wanted and the fact that this had been _his _idea. Even his mother couldn't see how different and wonderful it was from anything he might have been expected to do; she had smiled at him and told him that she liked him being outside the Manor because it would give him more of a chance to meet suitable marriage candidates.

But Severus was watching Potter with a silent, intent gaze that made Draco's throat burn. Then he looked back at Draco, said, "Those are the spells he must cast, if we mean to save money," and was absorbed in the diagrams once more.

"You don't care," Draco whispered. He knew his words were probably too sharp, from the slowness with which Severus turned his head this time, but he had gone too far to stop now. "You don't care what I feel about him."

"I was under the impression that it did not matter," Severus said, his voice crackling like dry leather, "because this is a _business _proposition, not one based on friendship."

Draco stood straight and still for a minute. He knew he had lost, but he didn't know the name or nature of the game, and he wished he did. It might have made the loss a little easier to bear. Finally he said, "It is," in a voice he hoped would be as dry as Severus's.

If it was, Severus didn't notice or appreciate the effort, any more than usual. He simply sneered, said, "Act like it, then," and turned back to the diagrams.

Draco fought to keep from blinking as he walked back to his own work: brewing the simple potions that their clients would expect them to have on stock the first day they opened the shop again. If Potter was looking at him, it might have seemed as though he was holding back tears.

And he wasn't. He really _wasn't_.

It was just—

This was supposed to have been his grand moment, his daring and dazzling escape from the trap of self-pity that Severus had accused him of falling into and which Draco knew might have consumed him if he didn't do something.

Instead, everyone was ignoring him exactly as though they didn't know about his inner changes.

*

Harry had been watching from the corner of his eye for the last few days, and he had the impression that there was something wrong with Malf—Draco. (He was trying to learn to call his partners by their first names, even though the thought of calling Snape anything but, at most, "sir" was fearful to contemplate).

Malfoy went around sullenly, when that didn't make sense, because this had been his idea and Harry would have expected him to glory in that. He didn't make half the potions that he should have been making, or did it incorrectly, which earned him chilling glares from Snape. He sat with his head in his hands and made little whimpering noises.

_All right, _Harry admitted to himself as he walked towards the shop through the grey light of early morning, _so that was only the once, not all the time._

But what did he need? Or want? Harry was puzzled about that one. He'd tried to engage Malf—Draco in conversation a few times, and each time Draco snapped like a child denied a sweet and turned away. He left early when he could, and got there after Harry did, so that Harry was always involved in his building work for several hours before he noticed him. He spent time talking to Snape in low, intense conversation, but backed off and looked superior and sulky at once if Harry came close enough to hear.

Harry had even tried praising his potions, and that had received a withering glare and Malfoy's lofty announcement that he didn't value Harry's judgment on Potions, because everyone knew how little _he_ knew about them.

_What strategy is there that I haven't tried?_ Harry asked himself as he opened the door to the part of the shop that was visible to the public (both the new addition and the part Harry was building were shrouded in protective glamours and subtle Repelling Wards). _I could praise something else, but I don't know what he wants noticed. I could ask him outright—_

And then Harry stopped with one foot in the air, and laughed to himself. _That's so simple that I should have seen it a lot sooner._

"What are you laughing at, Potter?"

Harry looked up quickly. Malf—Draco stood in the middle of the room, his arms folded and his cauldron already bubbling behind him. Harry glanced around, but saw that Snape wasn't anywhere in the shop.

_Good. _This was the first time Harry had been alone with Draco since that conversation at Malfoy Manor. If he failed, at least it wouldn't be in front of someone whose opinion he cared for deeply.

_Or whose mockery can hurt me, _Harry amended, because that made more sense, and then smiled sympathetically at Draco.

"I was laughing because I thought of something that made me look stupid," he said, "and I really should have had that thought a long time ago."

"Admitting your own stupidity, finally?" Draco raised an eyebrow, and Harry decided to think that it made him look charming and sarcastic instead of sneering and ugly. _I have to get along with him, _he reminded himself firmly. _And he might have better reasons for this attitude of his than I know, yet. _"I agree that it's overdue."

Harry shook his head. "I was blaming you for your resistance to me," he murmured. "The way that I've tried to be pleasant to you and you've ignored me, but at the same time you seem to have a need for attention."

Malf—Draco actually backed away from him a step. "Who told you that?" he demanded. "I know I didn't say—" Then he fell silent and turned pale. Harry didn't know what thought he was having right now, but it didn't seem to be a pleasant one.

"No one told me," Harry said, speaking gently and soothingly because Draco seemed so upset. "But I figured out that I'm pants at guessing, and there's a simple method to find out the truth. It was the simple method I didn't try that made me think I was stupid."

Draco took a few wheezing breaths, which sounded as though he was trying to make them smaller and simpler and couldn't. "Well?" he demanded at last.

"What is it you want to be noticed about you?" Harry asked. "Do you want to be admired, or envied from a distance? Or something else? I feel like I would understand a lot more about you if I could just _know_."

Draco swelled up like a cat trying to scare away a dog. "What makes you think I'd tell you?" he demanded.

Harry thought about that, all the while trying to listen for Snape out of the corner of his ear so that he could stop the conversation if the man entered the shop. He didn't think it was something either one of them would want Snape to overhear. "Because you're dying to tell _someone_," he said at last. "I've noticed that you even get agitated when I'm working on things that have nothing to do with you. You stand up straighter when Snape or I look at you."

"_I _get to call him Severus." Draco was so smug that Harry felt a strong temptation to turn his back and pretend this moment of weakness had never happened.

But he bit his lip and argued with himself, _I don't think it's weakness. I think it's what has to happen if we're ever to live in peace. And I'm the one who forced myself into this business when they were fine on their own, so I should be the one who makes some kind of gesture of reconciliation._

"Yes, fine," Harry said. "But what you want is attention. I don't think my attention's ideal, but it'll do." He leaned forwards and tried to look as interested and attentive as he possibly could. "Well?"

Draco glanced over Harry's shoulder in turn, and then back at him. He swiped his palms together. Harry had the distinct impression that he was trying to get rid of sweat, though Harry couldn't see any when he looked at his hands.

"Fine," Draco said, speaking quickly. "It was _my_ idea to go into business with Severus, _my_ idea to do something that would change the pathetic life I was living. And then you came in behind me and acted as if it was all your idea."

Harry frowned. "I didn't—"

"But you never _noticed_," Draco said, his voice spitting with bitterness. "You never notice anything I do. And then you came in here with your fancy wards, and you wrote a letter that made Severus agree, and you looked as if you didn't _mind _the rent that we asked you to pay, and you did all these _things _that meant I was just a second-comer, and I _hate _it." He wrapped his arms tighter, as if he would fold in all the rare, precious, fragile things that someone else might damage and destroy with the force of their regard.

Harry paused until he was sure no more words would follow that. Then he said quietly, "Thank you, Draco."

Draco stared at him. "What?"

"Thank you," Harry repeated. "You were right. It was your news that you were going into business with Snape that made me realize I wanted that, too. I'd made this vow to change my life, to stop acting as if nothing interested me anymore, but I hadn't done it." _You still haven't done it, as far as dating someone goes, _he added in his head, but that was his personal life, not his business life, and he didn't need to trouble Draco with it. "So I would probably still be setting up wards and promising myself that I was going to change my life any day now if not for you."

Draco stared at him for so long Harry began to wonder whether his eyes would dry out; he hadn't blinked once. Then he said, "You're just saying that because I told you I wanted to hear it."

Harry raised his eyebrows. "Then you'll have to answer this question," he said mildly. "Since when have I cared enough about you or your opinion to oblige you by doing what you wanted?"

Draco squinted at him. Harry had no idea what his answer might have been, because the stairs creaked with Snape's tread then, and Harry turned and walked over to his part of the shop to continue his work.

He'd done the best he could, and now it was up to Draco to make the next move.


	4. Chapter 4

Thank you again for all the reviews!

What had Potter done?

But that question couldn't occupy Draco for long, because he was fairly sure he knew the answer. Potter was the stupid one, not him.

Which left the real question, once the one he had _thought _about had cleared away like smoke and let him see behind it.

_Why _had Potter done it?

Draco watched him the majority of that day, while he set other simple potions brewing and checked on them occasionally, while Severus wrote letters and made bargains by Floo and arranged the new displays of jewels, of stones, of animal skins and wings and legs, and Potter finished constructing one of the rooms he would use and set about decorating the inside walls with protections. Apparently he was still worried about assassins, and while Draco didn't think he needed to be worried, it would be nice to have the wards sheltering them from _real _threats.

His mind turned in several directions. Perhaps Potter meant to mock him when Draco believed his ruse.

But who would Potter mock him to? Besides, if he did that, Severus would not be amused, and would deprive Potter of something he seemed to want.

_Maybe he doesn't really want to work with us. Maybe this has all been a trick from the beginning._

But that didn't seem right, because he'd written that letter to Severus in the first place, and he'd spent all this time and work on the shop, and—

_Admit it, Draco. He would have to care a lot about your opinion to do that, as well as all the work on Severus's shop and the Manor._

The simpler explanation was probably the true one, Severus had taught Draco during his fourth year, when he'd written some deeply convoluted essays to try and figure out the "secrets" of simple potions. If all the texts, ancient and modern, agreed that powdered amethysts were required in a Stomach-Soothing Potion, it was probably simply because amethysts were neutral stones, non-reactive with a large number of ingredients, rather than because there was something special about the color purple.

Potter wanted to work with them. Maybe the real reason was the one he had told Draco; maybe it was something else. But he wanted to, and to do good work, he had to get along with them. He was probably tired of the way Draco brooded—Merlin, Draco was tired of it himself—and that meant he'd ask and see if he could fix the problem.

_Gryffindors always think that asking can fix the problem._

Except, Draco noted by the end of the day, it seemed to have worked. He was more energetic than he'd been since Potter had sent that absurd letter to Severus. He hadn't messed up one potion, the way he had the other days. He had thought about Potter instead of how no one was appreciating or seeing him.

Potter had appreciated him.

And Draco wanted to ensure that it happened again, and there was also a squirming sense of obligation in his mind, more uncomfortable than any life-debt.

So he had to talk to Potter.

*

"Potter."

Severus lifted his head. He had spent the afternoon absorbed in separating a shipment of skins from one another; the thoughtless supplier had mixed in leopard with jaguar with cheetah with spotted false nundu. Severus would not be using them again.

It had meant that Draco evidently thought himself unobserved, and so he had gone to talk with Potter. Severus hissed and shifted nearer so that he could overhear the conversation. He was pleased with Draco's work, for the most part, but disappointed at his constant need to interrupt Potter and drive him away. If he tried to do it again, Severus would give him a scolding, and, to be sure that it would take, one in front of Potter.

"Yes, Draco?" was Potter's pleasant reply.

Severus paused, wondering what motive Potter could have for that and what the expression on Draco's face was now.

Then he realized he could move forwards and see at least one of those things for himself, easily. He resisted the temptation to roll his eyes. He had really been a spy for too long.

He was in time, peering around the corner, to see Draco thrust his hands into his robe pockets and give a gusty sigh. Severus would have glared at such childishness, but Potter simply watched Draco, his wand poised in the air. Severus shook his head when he noticed the wards that Potter had been weaving pause along with him, glowing and shimmering in place like obedient fairies. He had never known any wizard who could coax simple spells to do that, let alone complex ones like wards. Potter's innate genius for defensive magic at work, that.

"I was thinking about what you said the other day," Draco said.

Potter nodded. Severus remembered that they had been standing close to each other yesterday, their gazes intent, when he walked into the shop. He had suspected a row. Hearing that it had not been made him put a hand on his heart to check that it was still beating regularly and that he had not passed into some strange trance state.

"I—I haven't appreciated what you're doing, either." Draco spoke the words almost mechanically, as though he was plowing through them and counting the beats until he was done in his mind. "It can't have been easy to reach out to us like this and decide to come and set up shop with people who've always despised you." He took a deep breath and met Potter's eyes with a courage Severus would have named as beyond him a moment ago. "Thank you."

Potter could have spoiled the moment in so many ways. Gloating triumph would have been Severus's choice for disaster, followed by awkwardness that would make Draco feel he had wasted his apology.

Instead, Potter nodded, gave Draco a quiet smile, said, "You're welcome," and turned back to his work. The wards once again began dancing.

Draco stood there for a time. Severus didn't know if he was wishing for more interaction or watching the intricate way that Potter's wards curled around one another.

He turned away in the end, and Severus swiftly slipped back to his own post. He wondered if Draco would notice the trailing edge of his robe, but Draco seemed incapable of noticing anything except his own emotions. He picked up a vial and stared at it for a full minute, as Severus could see by watching from the corner of his eye, before he shook his head and began to attend to the bubbling cauldron in front of him.

That was it, then. Severus could feel the slackening of tension in the shop. Draco and Potter would speak to each other more quietly from now on, and this was the beginning of a tentative friendship. Two days ago, Severus would have given much for that impossible vision.

Now, his muscles were coiled against it, and he would have liked to speak sharply to someone about what had happened.

_Why? You should be grateful that the feuds between Potter and Draco won't ruin your displays or make your customers run away._

It took Severus the rest of the afternoon to find the answer. He had had to know and judge his own reactions when he was a spy, but there had always been layers of his mind that he left well alone, and the peace since the war, the lack of need for his spying skills, had thickened the defenses that he built against the knowledge. He had to relentlessly ask himself questions until the solutions came to him out of self-defense.

_They may have a friendship, but it leaves me outside it. I want them to pay attention to me._

*

Harry wondered if Snape had noticed what he was doing.

Harry had spent most of the morning working quietly with his wards, as usual, and he had expected to eat lunch alone, since Draco's mother had called him back to the Manor to eat with her. But when he came out of his section of the shop, casting a spell that would leave the dust clinging to the walls and floor instead of to his robes, he found Snape waiting for him, body "casually" arranged across the exit to the street.

Harry paused and looked at him uncertainly. Did he want a duel? Had the kindness he had shown Harry the other day been an illusion after all? Harry didn't want to look as though he was tightening his grip on his wand, but he was. At least he had it already out, so he didn't have to think up a half-hidden way of drawing it, which would probably have failed anyway.

"Sir," he said, because he had to say something, and the air between him and Snape was growing and expanding with all sorts of things he would rather not think about. "Is something wrong?"

"No," Snape said, then didn't add anything else.

As the moments passed, Harry's stomach seemed to contract and throb like a second heart, and Harry decided that he had to have food before he died of it. _When in doubt, self-confidence often works, _he reminded himself, remembering some experiences he'd had with the wizarding public. He nodded to Snape coolly and strode ahead, as if he fully believed that Snape would move out of his way.

Snape turned, so that he was only half blocking the door, and said, "I wished to inquire if you wanted to join me for lunch today."

Harry paused in shock. He hoped his face didn't wear a blank, gaping look, the way his mind did.

"Of course," Snape said, and these words came out smoothly, unlike the jerky ones from before, "if you have other plans, I can quite understand." He started to step away, so used to rejection that he was anticipating it even here.

"No," Harry said hastily, "no plans." He knew he didn't look graceful or composed, but that didn't matter. When had he _ever _been one of those things in front of Snape? He turned to look up at him, striving to understand, wanting to know what was happening behind those black eyes, behind that sallow face. "I assumed you wouldn't want company," he added, "based on our past. But perhaps that was a stupid thing to assume."

"It was," Snape said, relaxing enough to lead Harry further into the shop. Harry assumed they would eat at one of the tables where Snape spread out specimens and considered their quality for inclusion in his goods, but Snape continued walking, to the stairs at the back that led up to his living quarters, and Harry was reminded once again that he was stupid to assume things.

Perhaps he had gulped or squeaked, because Snape turned around and looked at him closely. "Is something wrong, Mr. Potter?"

Harry cleared his throat. "No, nothing. P-please lead on, sir."

Snape watched him with a suspicious eye as they climbed the stairs, but Harry was too busy trying to imagine what his rooms looked like to really care.

The rooms were small, dim, and packed with irregular pieces of furniture, tables, and more crates. Harry avoided a chair that looked like a copy of an antique done in dust and wool and took a nervous seat on the cushions of a couch that _might _have been a bit sturdier. If nothing else, the cobwebs would probably hold it together.

"All right?" Snape said, and Harry knew that the man was watching him narrowly, and that the wrong reaction could be even more fatal here than it had been in the conversation with Draco.

But at least he had initiated that one, and had some idea of where it was going. Here, he had nothing to follow but his instincts. Harry smiled and looked straight at Snape. "Sure," he said. "What's for lunch?"

*

Severus felt as though he were walking on autumn leaves. They could crack and hiss at any moment and betray his presence, or at least the subtlety with which he was trying to work.

He had never imagined that a fitting recipient of that subtlety might be Harry Potter.

But he would not watch a friendship entwine two people who were sharing working space with him and leave him outside it, yet again. It had been that way at Hogwarts. Even the other professors who called themselves his friends ceased their jokes when he walked into a room, and gave each other significant glances that he could not interpret.

He and Draco were alike. Severus had no illusions that Potter would ever manage to intrude on that likeness and enter their intimacy uninvited. But as to what _would _happen, he was unsure.

And he knew, if Draco did not, the power of Potter's draw. Draco had turned his head to watch him walk past in school, even on the days when he did not dare engage him due to the presence of professors. He would stop speaking to someone else and sneer, his eyes tracking Potter without a word, then continue the conversation as if unaware of his own pauses.

Perhaps Potter would find that attractive in return. That unwavering attention, the lightness and grace of Draco's form, even the sharp way he spoke, were all means of deepening their friendship.

If Severus wanted anything comparable with Potter, he would need to work at it.

So he prepared the simplest lunch he could, one he thought would be to Potter's taste: tuna sandwiches, the bread ancient but subjected to a Freshening Charm, the fish left over from a shipment. He cast several more charms that ought to dissipate every taste of age. He had watched the way Potter looked at the dust and webs around them and suspected that he would be especially careful of the food.

Once, Severus would have been ashamed to keep his personal quarters like this, but his rooms at Hogwarts had not been separate from his private potions lab. He had to keep them clean because his work was there. But when he worked on another floor, there seemed little reason to tidy a room that was, after all, only meant for eating and sleeping.

He took the plate of sandwiches out to Potter. Potter watched him for a moment before taking one. Severus bristled, wondering if the idiot still thought that Severus was out to poison him.

But Potter took a large bite without waiting for Severus to take one, and when he shut his eyes and hummed under his breath in bliss, Severus had to concede there were more innocent explanations for the hesitation, such as Potter wondering which sandwich would please Severus more.

"Oi," Potter said. "This is _good_." He ate several more bites in such quick succession that Severus avoided looking at his mouth, imagining that he would see bits of bread and fish clinging to his teeth, and then reached for another sandwich.

Severus ate more daintily, watching the man who had been the boy he knew. Potter still ate like a seagull, all gullet and no discrimination, but at least he did not actually lick his fingers after he was done. He simply flopped back on the couch and closed his eyes with a tiny, happy sigh.

He opened them again an instant later and looked at Severus with a faint speckle of a blush on his cheeks. "Sorry," he said. "That was rude. But I'm always hungry after I finish putting up wards like that."

"You need not instruct me on the theory of wards," Severus said, his voice a hiss before he could stop it.

Potter promptly sat all the way up again, his fingers clasped tightly together in his lap, relaxation banished back to whatever strange realm it had come from. "Right," he said. "Sorry." This apology was more rushed than the previous one, but also more formal, and he went on looking fixedly at his hands when it was done.

Severus ate two more bites before he could stand it no longer. He had invited Potter up here to understand him, and this was not working. "Why did you write to me?" he asked.

Potter blinked. "I thought I explained it all in the letter," he said, affording Severus a single glimpse of green eye before he was looking at his hands again. Severus choked hard on the mouthful he had, suddenly remembering the moment when he had thought that those green eyes were the last sights he would see in this world. Potter rambled distractedly on, not noticing that momentary hitch, thank Merlin. "I wanted to be involved in something greater than just an endless round of casting wards for people. And if we join our businesses—"

"I did not mean that," Severus said. "Yes, you explained it well enough. But why did you take the risk? I cannot imagine that your friends were pleased."

For the first time since Potter had started working beside them, he laughed. Severus felt as though someone had slapped his face with a cold cloth and woken him out of slumber. He remained still, and that was a good thing, because it allowed Potter to continue and deprived Severus of a chance to sneer defensively, as he might have if left on his own.

"They both think I'm mental," Potter said. "Or I should say all of them, since I'm still close to the rest of the Weasleys." His face softened in a way that made a single, steady ache pulse down Severus's spine. "But because they think that, they also think this is a temporary aberration. They're determined to wait it out and see if I get better."

"Will you?" Severus was proud of himself for keeping his voice neutral.

Potter glanced up at him, and Severus wanted to flinch back. It had been a mistake to begin this conversation, a mistake to let Potter into the shop, a mistake even to accept his help so that he could be cleared from the ridiculous charges the Wizengamot brought against him. This was too sharp, too deep, too intimate, and too…many other adjectives. Severus should have remembered that he was distant from others for a reason. He should have remembered the distance that lay between him and Potter in school, and not tried to bridge it. It did not matter that this grown-up boy was Lily's son, not when he was also James Potter's and the former object of Severus's distinct _un_affection.

"I don't think so," Potter said, as if he were unaware of all the thoughts dashing like comets through Severus's brain, though Severus had feared they would be perfectly visible on his face. "After all, it's a bit much to want this and then turn around the next day and declare that I want something else." He folded his hands across his stomach, the heel of his right palm close to his wand.

"And is that the only reason that you would stay here?" Severus found himself asking sharply, as though Potter had struck him across the face. "Stubbornness? Refusal to admit to your friends that you may have made a mistake in coming in the first place?"

Potter stared at him with narrowed eyes, and Severus looked away. He should have remembered that his old self, the man Potter had _thought_ he was working with, would never have said such a thing, would have cared so little about Potter's presence that it was nothing to him whether Potter stayed or went.

But when Potter spoke, there was a slowness in his voice that suggested simply that he was trying to understand, rather than about to explode in mockery. "No. I do want this."

"Why?" Severus turned back. If he could not fully grasp what Potter intended to do, he could still go on the offensive. "There is no reason for you to sacrifice your future for such a strange ambition as working with us."

"I know." Potter raised an eyebrow. "If I thought it a sacrifice of my future, then I wouldn't have come here."

"Tell me why you did." Severus leaned forwards this time. Potter was too calm, too unruffled. Severus wanted to see him shuffle his feet and look away. Maybe that would make it easier to deal with his own unfortunate, highly-pitched desires. "Tell me."

"Because you were kind to me, that day you thanked me for helping you," Potter said. His eyes were big and drowning in sincerity, and tempting though it was to reject what he was saying, Severus _had _to believe it, simply because only Potter would be that utterly sappy. "I hadn't ever expected kindness from you. That's not why I helped. And it woke me up, and made me start wanting to do bigger things with my life."

Severus gestured around the dusty rooms with a contemptuous snort, inviting Potter's disapproval, inviting all the usual reactions. "This is not a bigger thing."

"It's more than what I was doing," Potter said. "I told you. The dull routine…this is different. And there's another reason."

Severus stared at him, waiting for it.

"It was you," Potter said. "No, I didn't expect kindness, but I was thrilled to get it. I thought at first that it was simply an inspiration, but when I heard that Draco was going to be working with you, I realized I wanted something more than that. I wanted to be with you, next to you, and see how you went about your daily life."

"My work cannot possibly interest you," Severus said. He had said similar things to Lily, many times, and to other people, other Death Eaters, who had attempted to insinuate themselves into his life. Take the interest and point it back as a weapon at the heart of someone who would threaten him. It had always been his way.

"I didn't say that it did," Potter replied, with the exaggerated patience that Severus was beginning to hate. "What interests me is _you_. The way you go about your life. The way you arrange things. I like watching you do that, though I haven't managed to watch a lot because I've been so busy on the other side of the shop. But I like knowing that you're there and doing it." A smile tugged up the side of his mouth. "And I like knowing that you can make tuna sandwiches."

Severus said nothing at all. He could have found a defense against words such as these had he not been staring with such witlessness, perhaps, but the stare deprived him of energy. Potter hesitated, then leaned forwards and waved a hand in front of his face.

"Are you all right?" he asked. "You look odd."

Severus snapped his mouth shut and stared at the far wall while he thought of the best response. "That still seems an odd reason to sacrifice the business that was making you money and keeping you in good odor with the public," he said.

"My real customers will find me here," Potter said, with a small shrug, as if he honestly didn't care. _He does not need to, when he has the Potter and Black fortunes locked in his vaults, _Severus thought, but the words lacked conviction even in his head. "And if they don't want to come to me now that I'm working with Death Eaters, as Draco has reminded me, then I don't think they need my services. They probably only wanted a ward-maker who was famous." Potter's face turned pensive. "If I could give away all that damn fame to someone, then I would. It's ridiculous, how many people act as though it's a gift."

"It _is _a gift," Severus said. "What I could not do with it in your place!"

Potter glanced at him. "I did look up spells that would transfer something like that from one person to another," he said. "And you were one of the candidates that I considered transferring it to. But, in the end, I couldn't find a spell that was safe enough. Too many of them seemed as if they would kill either me or the recipient. I had to give up."

"I am glad that there are some limits to your recklessness," Severus said automatically, but his mind was reeling. _He considered giving me his fame? He has something priceless in his hands, and he considered giving it up to me even before I thanked him._

"I would seem an odd destination for your fame," he said, because it had to be said. "Why would you consider me and not one of your friends?"

"Because you could use it," Potter said, with a simple shrug, as though they were discussing something as ordinary as the weather or Draco's frame of mind. "It's like you just said. It would help you, while it hasn't helped me."

He cocked his head suddenly, and stood up. "It sounds like Draco is back. We should probably go down and reassure him that we're still here, or he might think we've abandoned him." He chuckled. "He seems oddly prone to ideas like that."

Potter moved towards the stairs, but Severus locked the door with a nonverbal spell. He could not let this go, not yet.

Potter studied the door, lifted an eyebrow, and then turned and stared at Severus expectantly. "You seem serious," he said. "What about?"

Severus looked at him. He had hoped to clarify and strengthen his relationship with Potter by inviting him into his rooms. He had not realized what would happen to him instead.

No one had ever spoken of giving him such a gift before—and never because, simply said, it would be useful to him. They had owed obligations to him, or been part of the same House, where to strengthen one person _was _to strengthen the House. Severus did not know how to deal with this overwhelming strangeness.

But he would have to find some way to deal with it, because Potter was peering at him with curiosity, and Severus did not want to inspire him to think about the reasons behind his silence longer than necessary.

"I wish to know why you would have given away your fame instead of using it," Severus said. It was not in the least what he wanted to know, but it would answer a few of his questions about Potter, and that was enough for now.

Potter stood there with his eyes half-shut for so long that Severus began to suspect he did not know how to respond, either. Then Potter said slowly, "Every time I thought I could use my fame for large things, instead of small ones, it didn't work out. It was good for inserting an interview in the _Quibbler _during my fifth year that Voldemort really had come back, but not so good for making Umbridge shut up about the Ministry's lies. It was good to attract customers to my business, but not enough to make them leave me alone, or leave _you_ alone." He looked at Severus as his lips twisted in a bitter smile. "I reckon you never saw the newspaper article where I asked for people to stop harassing you and other former Death Eaters? It ran in the _Quibbler._"

Severus had to take a few deep breaths to control the immediate hostile reaction that Potter's demanding notice of his fame aroused in him. Then he said, "No. I was not aware you had done such a thing."

Potter shrugged. "I thought it was safe to have Luna interview me, and if it had worked I would have considered letting someone from the _Prophet _write an article. Instead, I got lots of Howlers telling me that I didn't lose anyone important in the war, and that was the week you had three attacks in a row on your shop. I can't _use _the fame. It uses me."

Severus remembered that week, of course. He did not know what to say. Perhaps Potter could have learned to make capital of his name, his face, his reputation, if he had only tried. But to retreat from a failed effort was certainly what Severus would have done himself, so it was hard to blame him for that.

There were footsteps on the stairs then, and Draco's voice calling, "Where _are _you?" Severus wondered if there was a tinge of jealousy in his tone. As far as Draco knew, he was the only one besides Severus who had ever seen his personal rooms.

Apparently, Potter had a different interpretation of Draco's words. "He sounds worried," he said, and his stance was relaxed, his eyes nothing more than appealing as he tilted his head at Severus. "Open the door, please."

Severus did, and Potter stepped out to reassure Draco and condole with him. A moment later, Severus heard a low chuckle, and realized that Potter had said something that made Draco laugh—an occurrence that he had once been sure would never take place, at least with intention on Potter's part.

This did not truly _contradict _his impressions of Potter so far, Severus told himself sternly as he came out of the room and into the shop again to join his two partners. It simply meant the man was more complex and strange than he had supposed, and he knew that already.

He had thought he knew that.

But for all his wisdom, watching Potter move about the shop—really watching him, not assuming that Potter's actions were familiar and thus needed no attention—began to teach Severus that he might not know everything there was to know about Harry Potter.


	5. Chapter 5

Draco had had a thought.

It had first been sparked when he came to the top of the stairs on the day he had had lunch at the Manor and found Potter stepping out of Severus's rooms, smiling at him. Potter had shaken his head and said, "Afraid that we ran away for an afternoon of sweaty sex? Sorry. It was tuna fish sandwiches."

Draco had laughed, partially in surprise that Potter would make a joke, even such a poor one, and partially because there was no other response to a statement that ridiculous.

But he watched the way that Potter watched Severus, how his eyes focused so often on the man's hands, even when Severus was doing something as ordinary as setting up displays of beetle eyes. It was the first time Draco had ever seen anyone look jealous of Potions ingredients.

Potter became still when Severus glanced in his direction. Never for very long, perhaps not long enough for even Severus to notice, but he did so, as if he needed to think about what he would do with that dark gaze on him.

Potter would take a deep breath when he came in each morning and found Severus in the shop, as if his dreams were filled with images of what might happen should Severus grow disgusted with the way he was treated in Britain and simply leave.

Once Draco looked, he found more sparks everywhere, and he thought that he might know what had compelled those particular words to spring to Potter's lips.

He would perhaps have simply played with the thoughts, lighting them and watching them fall, if not for something else. They were so strange, and Severus seemed so unlikely to ever give Potter what he wanted, that there was nothing to do but play.

Then came the morning he arrived late at the shop, because his mother had delayed him to make a passionate speech about grandchildren and how necessary they were, and Potter rushed towards him, face white. Draco automatically picked up his wand and glanced over his shoulder. It was the way he would have expected Potter to look if there was an attack on the shop.

"Are you all right?" Potter demanded.

Draco stared at him. "Of course," he said, when he could swallow in the face of Potter's eyes. They were filled with lightning. The only other time Draco had seen them look like that was on the afternoon that Potter defeated the Dark Lord. "My mother lectured me, that's all." He paused, and perhaps the spirit of Hogwarts wasn't dead in him after all, because he had to add, "Worried, Potter?"

"With the threats that are already starting to come in?" Potter flung back his head and exhaled like a horse that had found its manger unexpectedly full of hay, closing his eyes. Draco watched the way his throat worked in fascination. "Of course I was. I didn't know if perhaps you'd been ambushed, and the last time I would see you was if someone sent your head to us." His fingers shook where they gripped his wand.

"Don't you have a gruesome imagination," Draco said lightly. His emotions spun and pivoted within him, and he couldn't resist a test to see if he was right. He reached out and put a hand on Potter's sleeve. "I'm fine."

It worked. Potter fixed his attention on Draco's hand, his breath catching. _Like I'm a wild and rare animal that he doesn't want to frighten away, _Draco thought, and moved his fingers in a small caress across Potter's sleeve before dropping his hand.

Potter blinked, shuddered as if the caress had delayed impact, and then looked up at him. "I was worried, that was all," he whispered.

Draco nodded in response and then strode over to do his own work, which was almost finished. In truth, Potter only needed to make the new side of the shop a bit prettier than he had managed so far, and Severus needed to arrange the displays in a way that would satisfy him instead of make him grumble, and they would be ready to open.

A fortnight ago, Draco had imagined that his proudest moment would be learning to tolerate Potter in the close confines of both a building and a business.

Now he looked sideways at Potter and entertained different thoughts, half of them incoherent and half of them too full of light.

But interesting, nonetheless.

*

Harry sighed and leaned his head back against the chair. Dinner at the Burrow was an exhausting event. Harry always felt compelled to at least _try _everything that was set in front of him, or Molly would be disappointed, and it didn't help that Ron had as big an appetite as ever and would involve Harry in eating contests.

"Are you sure that you wouldn't like more cake, dear?" Molly held out a plate that was entirely covered by a slice of white cake with red icing. Just looking at it made Harry's stomach heave.

"How can you _ask _that, Mum?" Ginny sounded half-amused, half-appalled. "Just look at his face. The cake would come up again as soon as it went down."

"Did you have to say that, Gin?" Ron stood up from the table and staggered carefully in the direction of the bathroom. Hermione shook her head as she watched him go, but her face was soft, her eyes fond. Harry smiled at the side of her head. He was glad that they had found each other, and even his one regret about that—that being around them made any relationship _he _tried seem superficial—was long since cured. Ron and Hermione couldn't help how much they loved each other.

Her eye perhaps caught by the shake of his head, Hermione oriented on him, and immediately adopted an expression that was almost pure predator. "How did you get along with Irene, Harry?"

Harry glanced down and took the chance to stir his finger through the crumbs along the edge of his plate a few times before replying. He was trying to come up with a diplomatic answer, but Hermione evidently saw straight through that and sighed.

"I wish I could find someone whose company you would enjoy, Harry," she whispered.

"It's hard replacing someone like Ginny," Harry said, tilting his head at Ginny. She was in a conversation with her mum, but she heard him and smiled thanks over her shoulder.

"Yes," Hermione said, with the insistent tone that meant she would bring this up for the rest of the evening if he didn't answer her now, "but it's been _three years_, Harry. That's enough time to move on and find someone else."

"If all I wanted was someone, I'd agree with you," Harry said, facing Hermione and reluctantly pushing his plate out of the way. Molly would put "just a little taste" of something on it if he didn't. "But I need a person who's not afraid of my fame or my past and respects me for who I am, not just the scar."

"Of course," Hermione said. "Irene's like that."

Harry shook his head. "She's nice, Hermione. And with you I'm sure she's fine. But she spent the whole evening gaping at my scar, and she didn't even notice when her food arrived. I had to say her name twice."

"Oh, dear." Hermione leaned back in her chair, dismayed—but only for one moment. In the next one, she had tilted her head and had the look in her eyes of a hawk about to pounce. "I've heard that Susan's single again."

Harry smiled temperately. His date with Susan Bones three years ago, soon after he'd broken up with Ginny, had been one of the more pleasant ones he'd been on. But Susan was looking for immediate marriage, and had taken up with one of the students who'd left Hogwarts right behind them less than a month after her date with Harry. "I'll keep that in mind."

Hermione folded her arms and gave him a steady, disapproving glance. "You need someone in your life, Harry."

"It's not as though I'm a hermit," Harry said, with a wave of his arm that took the entire Burrow in.

"Nearly as good as." Hermione rapped her fingers against the table as though she were playing a drumbeat. Harry was afraid the drumbeat was the opening sound in a charge to take his comfortable life away from him and give him another one, whether or not he wanted that. "You hardly see anyone except your customers. And this thing with Malfoy and Snape doesn't make any sense."

Harry rolled his eyes. He loved Hermione, but she was getting on his nerves, which made him more blunt than usual. "You mean you didn't predict it. You always think that things like that don't make sense."

Hermione sat straight up in her chair, offended, but Ron had come back from the bathroom, and he dropped a kiss on her cheek and a hand on her shoulder. "Don't," he said placidly. "If Harry wants to date or get married or find someone, then he'll do it eventually, and I'm sure that we'll be the first to hear the happy news." He sat down on the other side of the table looking as satisfied as though he had solved all the world's problems.

Hermione deflated and sighed loudly enough that she could have filled all Britain's hot air needs for the next century. As Harry smiled at Ron in thanks, she said, "I know. But I'm just worried, Harry. I always thought you would be married by this point and have children. You always wanted children."

Harry bit back another comment about how Hermione was only worried because he was doing something that was different from her predictions and did his best to smile and shake his head. "Sometimes what you want changes," he said. "And I'm not the same person I was in Hogwarts. Children would be nice, but I'm not going to hurry into marriage just to have them."

He caught Ginny watching him wisely out of the corner of her eye. Harry nodded to her. She knew what he was talking about better than any of them. They nearly had got married too soon to satisfy other people and their own craving for a family. Luckily, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had insisted that they wait until Ginny was at least out of Hogwarts, and those few months had made Harry realize that it would have been a mistake.

He and Ginny would have suited each other. But Harry wanted more than suitability. He wanted passion. He wanted a challenge. He wanted someone who wasn't exactly like him, but similar enough that he could have lots of brilliant rows and then reconciliation afterwards. Hermione had at least taken enough notice of that that she was no longer trying to set him up with people who had been Gryffindors.

He wanted—

A clear picture formed in his mind, and he shut his mouth and swallowed loudly. Ginny gave him a curious look, and Hermione sat up as though she thought he was about to make a life-changing announcement.

"What's the matter?" she asked, when Harry kept silent.

"Why should anything be the matter?" Harry asked. At least, he thought he asked that. He was sitting with his head bowed, his fingers pressed against his temples. His mind was filled with a relentless buzzing that at once made his thoughts feel clearer and kept him from focusing on much else.

"I know that look." Hermione leaned forwards. "I know you. You _realized _something. What was it?" She was practically begging by the end of the sentence. Harry managed to snort in spite of everything else. Hermione couldn't stand for knowledge to be in someone else's hands and not her own, even for one minute.

Ron put a hand on Hermione's shoulder and rubbed gently. "Leave him alone, Hermione," he said again. "I think this is something he needs to absorb on his own."

Harry nodded gratefully to his best friend and made his excuses to get out of the Burrow and away from everyone as soon as he could—and not just because Hermione was looking as though she would set ambushes for him in the corridors until he told her what she wanted to know. He really needed cool air and the sight of the stars overhead and room to _think_.

He wanted someone like Draco and Snape. Or Draco or Snape. The thought had come to him so suddenly, but it felt familiar and right. Maybe the idea had been hanging around his head for years, maybe he'd always known what he wanted, but it hadn't come clear until he knew the proper people to give it a shape.

Harry felt his breath coming short, the way it had when he first had the revelation, and he sighed and shook his head. _That _was ridiculous. It wasn't as though Draco and Snape were suddenly going to sit up in their beds, shiver all over, and know that he wanted them.

_Or someone like them, _he stubbornly confirmed to himself. They were probably inspirations, role models, for his idea. Not the real thing.

_How in the world can they be the real thing?_

Harry thought of the way that Snape still nodded to him coolly in the mornings, how they had never had a single civil conversation except the one the other day that had ended so strangely. Harry's revelation that he would give up his fame so Snape could do something with it evidently didn't impress Snape.

_And why should it? _Harry ran a hand through his hair and paced in a circle, glad that the Burrow was at a distance from the other houses in Ottery St. Catchpole and no one was likely to come up and see the Savior acting crazy. _I did so little for him in the past, and even what I've done since then is just making up for the poor treatment that he's received from other people. There's no reason for him to be grateful._

_He did say thank you._

But Harry snorted bitterly. _That was a gesture of gratitude at the most. Not an overture of love._

His situation with Malfoy was even more hopeless. They were getting along now, but that was a long way away from love. Harry could just imagine what would happen if he mentioned anything about dating in front of Malfoy. His nostrils would flare, his eyes would widen, and he would edge slowly away from Harry, being careful not to taunt or otherwise anger the wild Gryffindor.

_They have to be inspirations, because there's no way I can be with them, and fighting for one hopeless cause in a lifetime is enough._

Harry paused as he realized there was something else that didn't make sense. Snape and Draco were different people. But Harry's feelings didn't seem to distinguish between them.

_I want them both. Or I want them equally._

Harry made a disgusted noise and dropped his head into his hands. Wasn't that a sign that he didn't really want _them_, he just wanted someone like them? Snape and Draco were real people. They didn't deserve to be treated like—like interchangeable sex objects. Harry was imagining what they could be or what he wanted them to be, he was piling impossible demands on them in his mind, and he couldn't even have the courtesy to think that they would react differently and demand different kinds of love.

_At least I know what I want now, _Harry told himself firmly, to relieve the hopelessness that seemed to trickle out from his heart and flow along his limbs like clinging mud. _That has to be worth something. And I can find someone who fits that picture better than they ever could, and who's interested in me to boot._

Harry Apparated back to his flat, and set about trying to imagine ways that he could meet someone who would give him what he wanted.

He spent more time banishing pictures of what Snape and Draco probably looked like when they were aroused, but at least the exercise gave him a few names by the time he went to bed.

*

A change had taken place in the last few days. Severus could sense it.

That worried him.

He did not know, and could not tell, what it was.

That annoyed him.

The work went on as normal. Potter was adding the finishing touches to his part of the shop. Draco had begun to take out advertisements in the _Prophet_, the _Quibbler, _and any other paper that would not refuse to accept Malfoy money. Almost all of them took the advertisements despite a scornful tone to the acceptance letters, as Severus had known would happen. The human principle of greed and their love of goods no matter how produced was one reason he had managed to make a living in the last few years.

Draco did not mess up his potions. That was not the problem.

Potter's magic seemed as strong as ever, their wards a gleaming array of layered defenses that Dumbledore might have had trouble getting through. That was not the problem.

The displays at last marched around the front room of the shop in neat ranks, and Severus did not think he would have to rearrange the shelves again, no matter what last-minute crates his suppliers sent. That was not the problem.

_What is? _

He moved throughout the shop as silently as the Bloody Baron had once patrolled the dungeons, checking on Potter's work and Draco's. Draco gave him a dazzling smile and promptly began to brew with more zeal than before. There were some students Severus's presence had always been able to inspire.

Potter tensed his jaw and continued working without any faltering, but with a heavier grip on his wand. Severus paused, head cocked, and wondered if it was only the ghost of the professor he had once been that urged him to consider the source of the problem as here.

He watched, but Potter never looked around or slowed his movements. The wards were lining up along the inside of the windows now, defending the building from an attack by admitted customers as well as random strangers. Severus had to admire the defensive thinking.

Of course, Defense Against the Dark Arts had always been Potter's best subject.

_What was he poor at? _Severus asked himself as he prowled in a slow circle around the young man. Potter's face was flushed now, and he refused to look up, a smattering of sweat on his cheeks. Of course, this was intense magic, but Severus was inclined to think it was more than that. _What will make him crack and speak?_

"Will you go away, please?" Potter sounded as if it were an effort to make the words that polite. He was glaring ferociously at the ward in front of him now, which shone blue and gold, and hunched his shoulders against Severus's inquisitive stare. The motion which he used to slice off the end of the ward was vicious.

"Why?" Severus asked quietly. He would not attempt to justify himself, because it would be too easy to get into a shouting match with Potter, and that would dissipate his discomfort by moving him back to familiar ground. Severus did not know what the change was, not yet, but it had _something _to do with Potter's discomfort, and that meant that discomfort should be allowed to remain until Severus had figured out how to account for it.

"Because you're making me nervous?" Potter glared at him from behind tilted glasses that had almost slipped off his nose. "And I won't construct good wards if I'm nervous."

"Do I make you nervous, too?" Draco's voice asked from the doorway that divided Harry's section of the shop from theirs.

Severus gave him a glance of approval. Draco lounged against the doorway, eyes distant, face aloof, but he could not fool someone who had known him for so long. Draco, too, had sensed the strange difference and had come in to speak about it.

"When you're hovering around me like this." Potter hunched his shoulders again and glared out at them like a turtle who knew that Severus wanted to harvest its shell. "My customers usually have the good sense not to do that."

"Does working in the same place with us make you nervous, then?" Draco's voice was light and surprised. "I had thought you were more adult than that. _Do _excuse me, Potter. I won't make that mistake again."

Potter snarled under his breath and took his glasses off completely to wipe his face. Severus had to look more closely at Potter's dirty, work-stained hands. Otherwise, he would make a fool of himself by staring at those green eyes that he had not known were so bright.

"Leave me alone, please," Potter said, with an irritable toss of his head. "You can be in the same building, but not right around me." He gave Severus a pointed glare, and this time Severus looked up unwarily and caught the full force of green.

Draco tilted his head, and Severus became aware that he might be staring. He cleared his throat and said, still harshly, "Are you sure that you have created that last ward aright, if my presence so bothers you?"

"Damn it, I don't know," Potter muttered, and turned back to the ward. He examined it, then sighed. "No. Go away, please." He gestured with his wand, and the ward unwove and dropped into a coil of light at his feet, an effect Severus had never seen before.

Severus did not move. He was too close to the source of the secret, and Potter's discomfort, now. It was as impossible to step away from this as it would have been to give up a secret he had pursued during his years as a spy.

Draco moved in from the other side, and Potter's sharp twitch showed that he was aware of it. Still, he concentrated on the ward, and from the way it glittered and spun, Severus doubted that their presence was _really _adversely affecting Potter's concentration.

When the ward finished, but before Potter could turn around, Draco reached out and laid his fingertips in the middle of Potter's back.

Potter jumped like a spooked cat and spun about. Severus had time to give Draco a glance he would understand: _Is this worth the risk?_

_Trust me, _Draco's tilted head said, and Severus silently agreed to do so, then faced Potter again to watch the show.

"What—what—" Potter seemed to strive to catch his breath. He adjusted his glasses again, then stabbed an accusing finger at Malfoy. "You're a _menace. _What if you had done that when I was in the middle of creating the ward?"

"But I didn't," Draco said, with that little-boy innocence that Severus knew had fooled more than one professor who should have known better. "I waited until you were done. Now, are you going to tell me why such a small touch discommoded you so much?"

"Only you would use a word like discommoded," Potter muttered, and took off his glasses to wipe them.

"I would be interested in the answer to Draco's question," Severus said, and Potter looked at him in frustration. Severus lifted an eyebrow. "If you are that jumpy, it might affect several of the more delicate potions as they are brewed."

"I'm just not used to people _touching _me," Potter said, in too loud a voice, and then tried to recover himself with a shake of his head and a silly smile. "I mean, my fans always try to get too close, and I haven't dated regularly in a while, and my friends tend not to do that kind of thing, you know?"

"So that means that you object to this, then," Draco said, before Severus could consider what to say in response to that ramble, and reached out to lay his hand on Potter's shoulder, moving it with exaggerated slowness so that Potter had every chance to see it coming.

Severus saw it. He _knew _it was there. Potter watched Draco's hand with a sick longing, and his eyelids fluttered when it came to rest.

He thought he knew, then, what Potter's problem might be. He simply did not know how to deal with it.

And then, a moment later, his perception of the problem changed, and he did not know how to deal with the vision that resulted. Potter had reacted nervously to Draco's presence, but also to Severus's own.

That meant—

The flutter of the eyes, the longing, might be not only for Draco but for _him_.

Severus knew what he thought on most subjects, having lived longer in mental years than most people around him had been alive in physical ones. He could give weary and cynical answers to most questions, or muster hopeful ones if that seemed more likely to please a customer. But this was not something he had ever considered, and so he could only stand and stare.

Potter seemed to realize he had betrayed himself. He pulled himself up and glanced between Draco and Severus as if he were trying to decide how fast they would throw him out.

"Look," he said, when Draco only stared at him as if he enchanted and Severus held fast in his own dumb paralysis, "I don't plan to ever press you on anything." His voice was soft, but Severus didn't know if that was because Potter was trying to placate them or because he was struggling with his own panic. "I know that you have your own lives, and I'm the one who insisted on a place in your business. You don't have to pay any attention to this." He brightened suddenly, and stood up straight, in a way that made him look, disturbingly, more attractive than he had done so far. "In fact, that's the best solution, isn't it? We all ignore this until it goes away."

"I hope it never goes away," Draco whispered, and moved closer to Potter. He gave Severus a look as he moved, and Severus suddenly had to confront another possibility that he would not have said existed if anyone had questioned him about it. (And someone would have had to question him about it. Severus would never have imagined this on his own).

"You would think that, wouldn't you, Malfoy?" Potter glared at Draco, making it clear that, whatever attraction he felt, it had not softened his intolerance of insults—or, in this case, what he thought were insults. "You enjoy laughing at me, and I bet it makes your day that—"

"That someone I could easily desire desires me?" Draco asked, and his voice had the kind of smothering softness that made Potter pause and stare at him with his mouth open. "Hmmm, yes, it does indeed."

He leaned forwards while Potter was still gaping and put his mouth against Potter's in what Severus recognized as a light, testing kiss.

Potter stood there, and blinked so hard that Severus choked his laughter. Then Potter reached up, gripped Draco's shoulders, and maneuvered him slowly backwards, away from him. He didn't wipe his mouth, but he looked as though he wasn't far from it. He stared at Draco, then at Severus.

"And how do you feel about it?" he asked. His voice was so tense that there was no room for any other emotion in it, not even the hope that Severus had wanted to hear.

_Wanted to hear._

And that was when he admitted to himself that this was happening, and that perhaps the pleasure he had felt when Potter had spoken of giving his power to Severus and when Draco had volunteered to set up a Potions shop with him was not entirely intellectual.

"I am—surprised, but willing to continue," Severus said. He thought about taking the risk Draco had, about touching his mouth to Potter's, and then strangled the impulse. He had taken enough initiative during his younger days, and almost every decision he had made had been wrong. For once, if someone wanted him, let them come and court _him_. Potter would kiss him first. "I had not anticipated this."

"I realized it the other day," Potter said and licked lips that had already swollen, despite the gentleness of the kiss he and Draco had shared. "I didn't know—I had no idea that you might ever feel the same." He placed a hand in the middle of Draco's chest, because Draco was straining to move closer to him again, and looked him in the eye. "Do you really think it could work, with three people?"

"Of course." Draco said that as if Potter had asked the stupidest question in the world. "I've been with more people than that at once."

Potter gave that little jerk of his head Severus had seen earlier when he first stepped into the same room. "And you really think it could work?" he asked, voice slipping and straining. "With _us_?"

"Who else would it work with?" Draco's voice was soft and eager, and he slipped past Potter's weakened guard and leaned against him, chest to chest, eyes shut, for a moment. Then he turned and reached out for Severus. Severus let himself be drawn closer, concentrating on the way Draco looked at him instead of his own uncertainty and panic. "We've all shared experiences that most of the wizarding world could only dream of. We've been together for years in the past, and we watched each other change. We belong with each other."

Potter shook his head, but it was not a gesture of negation, at least if the stunned smile on his lips could be believed. "That _sounds _like it makes sense. I'm not sure it really does."

"Then we'll make it so," Draco said, and turned and kissed Severus.

Shock captured him again, and Severus knew he did not make as good a showing as he wished during his first kiss in years. Draco did not seem to care. He pressed close against Severus as he had pressed against Potter, murmuring and sighing and moving his fingers slowly up and down Severus's shoulders as though he wanted to learn the shape of the muscles and flesh under the robes.

Severus reached up at last and captured Draco's clever hands, because he could not let this continue if he was to retain his dignity. "What made you like this?" he breathed against Draco's mouth. "I can see why your rivalry with Potter might have transmuted into desire, and Potter has always been incomprehensible, but you cannot be blind to the faults of an alliance with me, Draco."

Draco laughed merrily. It was a sound that Severus had not heard out of his throat since the war. "You don't know your own attractions, sir," he said, stepping back but giving Severus a look that made it seem as if he, or at least his hands, had lingered. "Does he?" he added, addressing Potter this time.

Potter shook his head, and the burning in his eyes was almost as good as the kiss that Severus wanted. "He doesn't," he said. "It's hard to see your own intelligence and courage and pride and stubbornness and skill from the outside. Well, maybe not your skill," he added after a moment of thought. "It seems as though you put too much of your pride into that, sometimes."

"Courage?" Severus asked, the only word he could manage. The rest were sticking in his throat as though Potter's admiration were glue to hold them there. Then he took a few deep breaths and the glue came unstuck. "You must be confusing me with someone else, someone who came from your House—"

"Hogwarts should only be important for the passion it can give us, instead of take away," Potter said, and moved a step closer. "I was talking about the real bloody courage it takes to spy on someone like Voldemort, and continue working for Dumbledore even when you _knew _he was being a manipulative arse. And if you shared those memories of my mum with me because you thought you were dying, well, it still means something. You weren't afraid of someone else seeing them. You knew that you wouldn't appear at your best, and still you shared."

"What memories?" Draco asked, alert as always for something he did not possess, looking back and forth between them.

Severus did not intend to gratify his curiosity at the moment. This was his and Potter's time, and he was going to conquer or be conquered, but he would not let Potter's words remain there, unchallenged, as if they were true. "You should be careful, Potter," he said, voice low. "You'll be forgiving me next."

Potter shook his head. "I forgave you long ago. Do you think I could have stood up for you at the Death Eater trials if I didn't?"

Severus sneered at him. "It does not require forgiveness to be noble, to give the salve to your conscience that you so often love to apply."

Part of him was appalled at his behavior, and from the way Draco's eyes widened, so was he. Did Severus _want _to lose this chance? Draco's face clearly asked. Potter wanted them for reasons unknown, and Severus was _trying _to fuck it up?

But Severus knew what he was doing, at least as well as someone who had just had change launched into his life and watched that life crack up, down, and sideways could know. He was not easy to get along with. He was vicious, violent, and vengeful. True, he had been forced to subdue some of those traits for the past few years, because no one would have frequented his shop if he did not, but lovers were a different proposition altogether. They would know him for who he was or not know him at all.

He had made the mistake once of believing that he could hide what he did and what he honored from the person he loved. He would not do so again.

"I _know _that, you git," Potter said, his voice sharpening with frustration. He moved forwards again, his hands twitching, and Severus wondered if Potter would touch him and what it would be like if he did. "I forgave you because I wanted to, all right? And because I knew after those memories how much you had gone through. You fought more to save me than I ever realized, and more to save the world."

Those words made Draco choke a little, but they relaxed Severus. Yes, he could see Potter forgiving him for that reason, and at least it sounded _real_, unlike the illusions that he had allowed himself to cherish for too long. He nodded and said, "If that is the case, then I will grant you the privilege of trying to stay with me."

Potter's face lit up, and then he lunged forwards and gave Severus his kiss.

It was not the searching, passionate one Draco had given him. It was rough, enthusiastic but unskilled, and Severus was forced to wonder suddenly exactly how far Potter had got with all the women he had once dated. Potter's arm curled around his neck and dragged him closer, and even the brush of his skin felt papery and unexpected. Severus kept his lips closed with an effort. This was, by several orders of magnitude, more than he had ever thought he would get from Potter, and such a gift should be rewarded.

But there was no reason to make it too easy for him. Severus stepped back, knowing his lips looked bruised, and nodded. "Acceptable," he said. "But what else can you do besides kiss?"

Potter's eyelashes trembled, and his gaze darted down to Severus's groin for just a moment.

"I did not mean that," Severus snapped, wishing he could roll his eyes without Potter taking it wrongly. Merlin, would they have to _train _the boy to have appropriate responses in public? He would have thought Potter would have mastered the art of that by now, since he had been the wizarding public's favorite feast for so long, but it was possible that he had spent enough time hiding to avoid lessons in etiquette. "I was asking how good you are at living with another person?"

"I don't know," Potter said, and his voice sounded like himself again, his eyes fastened to Severus's face as if he were seeking the answer to a Potions exam. "I haven't done it since Hogwarts. I'm out of practice at dating, even." He turned around and looked at Draco, as if he had suddenly realized he and Severus were leaving him out, and Severus stifled an unworthy jealous thought. He would have to grow used to sharing with someone if they were truly to pursue this mad arrangement. "But I'd like to learn," Potter said. "For your sake. Both of you." He craned his neck back at Severus and blinked, and it took Severus a moment to realize that Potter was waiting for him to say that was acceptable.

"I'm hard to please." Draco had lifted his nose in the air and struck a pose that Severus would have found irritating, but he knew why Draco took it. He was trying to disguise his own uncertainty, his own insecurity. He folded his arms and gave Potter a slow look, like someone sizing up a winged horse.

Potter's eyes turned sharp. "And so am I. I just hope we're not hard to please on the same things, or we'll never get along."

"How is that different from our history so far?" Draco muttered, and Severus decided that he should intervene, or they might destroy this fragile connection between them before it had even started.

"We must decide what we are going to do," he said. "We can hardly go on ordinary dates without someone noticing, and the wizarding world would go mad when they found out who you were dating." He nodded to Potter.

Potter grimaced in resignation. "I know. I've usually resorted to glamours to disguise myself when I was on dates before, but I wouldn't want to do that with you, not forever. Besides, my dating two men will be enough to get the _Daily Prophet _upset."

"I think we should meet the challenge," Draco said stubbornly. "Glory in it. You can't make them leave you alone, so you might as well flaunt what you have in their faces and show them that no one else gets to have so much as a taste." He was looking back and forth between Severus and Harry with an expression that Severus recognized, somewhat uneasily. Draco had always been unwilling to share his skills with others in his House; it was to be expected that he was possessive of his lovers, but Severus still hoped that it was not excessive.

"No, I can't make them leave me alone," Potter said. "But my private life is just that—private."

"You've tried to make it that, and see the good it's done you." Draco gestured with one sweep of his arm. Severus would have chided him for trying to encompass too much, the way he had sometimes done in his Potions essays. There was nothing there for Draco to point at, too much that could not possibly shelter within his gesture. "We should be aggressive from the beginning. Make it clear that they can stare at us in envy or hatred or disgust, as long as they never do anything more than stare."

Potter's eyes narrowed. Severus thought about intervening again, and then decided not to. Perhaps one time had been necessary, but he could not always play the role of a parent to an erring child.

"You might think that you want the attention I get, Malf—Draco," Potter said, his voice old and dusty. He looked down and rubbed at his chin, which was, Severus noted, beginning to sprout a fuzz of beard. "But you don't, once you're in the middle of it. It's the attention of sharks, snatching at you, wanting to eat anything they can. No one really understands or envies you the way you're imagining."

Draco paused, perhaps impressed by the metaphor Potter had used, then shook his head and pressed on. "But I don't want to hide forever," he said. "And it sounds like you want to."

Potter gave him a harsh glare, but he blinked a moment later. "Not forever," he agreed. "But for the first time we eat together, I'd like it to be a private dinner, here in—" He paused and turned to Severus with an expression on his face that Severus didn't understand. He looked as though he had lost something, but surely not even Potter could lose track of his own thoughts in the middle of the sentence.

"What do I call you?" Potter asked.

Severus spread his fingers and then placed them together in a motion that had served well to conceal his hesitancy in the past, while he struggled for the words to speak. He had been thinking of Potter by his surname even after the kiss, and he was almost sure that Potter would not long put up with that.

"By my first name," he said, before he could spend time dithering. "That is what Draco calls me, after all. And do you believe we could become comfortable with each other if we were held at a distance by last names?"

"No," Potter said. "But you and Draco have been—friends for a long time." He had visibly tried to find some better word than "friends" for it, and could not. "I thought you might want me to wait before I used that name." He ducked his head and flushed with desperate, nervous embarrassment, in a way that Severus did not want to admit was charming.

"And we'll be more than friends soon," Draco said, with a leer that should have been illegal. "I think you can use his first name." He paused delicately, and Severus was not sure what he would say next, but in truth, he should have been able to predict it. "Harry."

Potter glanced up, and though he did not make a sound, the sight of his eyes was as good as hearing a gasp of pleasure.

"Thanks," he said. He grinned then. "I've been struggling to call you by your first name anyway, Draco. I'm glad to think that my effort won't be wasted."

He turned to Severus then, and visibly nerved himself as if about to teach a class full of descendants of Neville Longbottom. "Severus. What would you say to a dinner here in your private rooms?"

Severus felt a small shock through his body when Potter spoke his name. It took him a moment to identify it.

It was like hearing the toll of a bell, the long-awaited summons calling him home, at last.


	6. Chapter 6

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Draco knew he could not stop smiling and that he must look like a bloody idiot—from the sidelong glances of his parents at the table that night if nothing else.

He did not care.

He had something he had never had: the promise of a challenge that would not turn on him and bite him.

It was the way he had sometimes felt before Quidditch games. But he knew in his heart of hearts that he would never succeed at Quidditch in the way he wanted to, not so long as Potter was playing in the position of Seeker. He simply had too much talent. Draco could watch and play and envy, and nothing would make any difference. So Quidditch was always haunted by the fear of failure, which dimmed the joy.

The same thing would have happened to him if he had tried to set up in business for himself immediately after the war, something he didn't think Severus understood. Severus could talk all he liked about ambition and the right to create and how a strong will could stand up against the sneers of the public, but Draco's fear of failure was too strong. He had known that, and decided that what he would do instead was engage in a series of predictable moves, stupid love affairs that he _knew _would end but which he couldn't care enough about to make that ending painful for more than a few days.

He had not thought he would grow past that, even when he got more and more frustrated with it and with himself.

And then here came rescue, from an unexpected direction.

Draco snorted into his soup, which made bubbles rise from the surface and stares rise on his parents' faces. They had trained him not do to that, said their eyes. He knew better. But Draco couldn't care about that, either.

_Fitting that Potter should be the one to rescue me, _he thought, and picked up his napkin to mop the soup on his face away.

That was apparently too much for his father, who sat up and gathered that chill silence around him that he usually used before he spoke. Once, Draco had cowered in fear and awe when that happened, and wished to imitate it. Then he had wrapped himself in indifference. Now he sat up and paid attention, but it was more for amusement value than anything else. No matter what Lucius said, he couldn't stop this.

_No one could, _Draco thought, and felt like hugging himself.

"I wish to know what young witch makes you react in such an inappropriate manner," Lucius said. His voice was so cold that Draco had to nod to him in recognition. His father thought that even infatuation was no excuse for bad manners. That made Draco picture what it would be like when Pot—Harry and Severus ate with them at the same table, and he had to struggle to hold his laughter back.

"Not a witch, Father," Draco said. He saw no point in trying to lie. Their dates might be private, for the moment, but their relationship wouldn't be. Draco had a good thing in his life, finally, a challenge that tempted him too much to fear it, and that he would have help in succeeding at it. He leaned forwards and smiled directly into Lucius's face. "A man. Well, two men," he added, savoring the words as he said them. He hadn't been lying when he told Pot—Harry that he'd been with more than two people at once before, but it had always been temporary, usually when one of the partners decided they wanted Draco for a little while. "One of them is Harry Potter, and one is Severus."

The world all around him was ice. A single crack would send repercussions and consequences bouncing down on his home. At least, that was the impression that Draco knew his father wanted him to take out of this conversation. But it wasn't the impression that he _would _be taking, because sitting and staring no longer impressed Draco the way it used to, even when it was Lucius doing it.

"Why would you do such a thing?" his mother asked from her end of the table.

Draco faced her. She had a leaf of lettuce still left on her plate and had just put down her fork, apparently to signal that she would eat no more tonight. Her gaze on Draco was pensive, her hands folded atop each other. Draco found it hard to tell what she was thinking, despite her question. She might be as distressed as his father, or she might be allowing him a chance to explain himself.

"Because I want to," Draco said. "And I want them. And they want me." The words came out of his mouth like sweet wine, curled and foamed on his tongue. And they were much easier to speak than he had thought they would be. Draco sighed and stretched his arms above his head to celebrate his freedom, while he watched his parents attentively for their next move.

"Such an alliance will not help you to win a bride." His mother's voice was calm and warm, so that someone watching her might have thought she approved, but Draco could see the clamp of her fingers on the other hand.

"I know," Draco said. "But I'm starting to think that I don't want a bride. Why else would I have chosen so many lovers that I couldn't marry, except that I was seeking a way out of your expectations? And now I have one."

"You know what will happen if you do not marry," Lucius said. His voice was a growl, only barely holding onto words. Draco faced him with a slight smirk. He had a good idea of why his father was so angry. He had been _ignored_, and Draco had not reacted with a cower and a whimper to his glare.

"I know," Draco said. "The Malfoy line will die out. Except I don't think it will. I can have a child without being married, after all."

Lucius staggered back in his seat, flailing out with one hand as if he thought his cane stood next to his chair. Draco raised his eyebrows. His father had never needed the cane; it was an affectation. This was the first time Draco had thought the gesture of reaching for it looked real.

"You cannot mean that," Narcissa said, her voice low and all the more piercing because of it. "You know that a bastard child cannot inherit the Malfoy properties and continue our name."

"Maybe there are more important things than the Malfoy properties and name in the world," Draco said, just to watch their faces. He enjoyed that for a minute, then continued, "And I could always adopt the child. Bastard children have been legitimized before."

His mother and father grimaced simultaneously. Yes, that had happened, and the Malfoys had several former bastards in their bloodline, but none of their descendants liked to remember the fact. Draco was beginning to think that it was time they remembered it.

"Why go through such trouble, when you could simply marry and have a child?" Lucius was trying to sound calm, but he only sounded ill. _I've really upset him, _Draco thought gleefully. _Good. It's time I paid them back for all their years of nagging me to get married already and give them grandchildren—grandchildren they didn't want for themselves, but because that was the only way to see the bloodline continue. _"You could find a compliant wife, one who would not care about—certain activities."

"I don't want one," Draco said cheerfully. "I think getting married would be the greater trouble. And I'm excited to see where this goes, with Harry and Severus. It might be to a wonderful place."

His mother had flinched during that little speech, and after a moment of concentration, Draco thought he had traced the flinch to his speaking Harry's first name. He clamped his mouth shut so he wouldn't burst out laughing. _It worries her to hear me say that, does it? Perhaps she thinks that I'll be more likely to change my mind and tire of him if I don't treat him like a lover._

Draco made a private decision in that moment: he would treat Harry well, whatever the temptation to sneer and berate him, and he would continue to do so. There were many reasons to do so, including the fact that Harry would leave him if Draco acted like a prat, but this was extra incentive. His parents wanted them separated, and that, for Draco, was all the more incentive to remain attached.

"This is so sudden," his mother said, recovering and obviously trying a new tactic. "Why should you want two men as lovers, Draco?"

"It's nothing I haven't had before," Draco said pointedly, meeting her eyes and hoping she remembered some of the scandals that had clung to his name in the last few years.

Narcissa passed her hand briefly in front of her eyes. Draco would have felt sorry for her if he thought she actually had a headache, but he doubted it. She was trying to accept that he had challenged her authority and ability to set a guard over his life, and could not.

"But never for a long time," Lucius said, either wanting to spare his wife or thinking that it was too long since the world had had the benefit of his wisdom. "Never _permanently._ You talk this time as if you thought you would—settle down." He gave a cruel twist to the last few words, which caused Draco to laugh outright.

"That's the very thing you've been urging me to do, Father," he said. "Does it somehow become a less worthy goal when you don't approve of my partner_s_?" Emphasizing the plural made them look even more ill.

"I was willing to tolerate youthful indiscretions," Lucius said, looking more and more grave the more Draco thwarted him, "because I thought that you knew better, and having your way when you were young could do you no harm." Draco rolled his eyes and snorted, and Lucius leaned against the table to glare at him. "You will respect me when I am speaking to you!"

"But what have you said that's worthy of respect?" Draco shook his head. "You've always urged me to make my own decisions and come to my own conclusions. Now, the minute I try, you turn against me. That suggests that you don't really know what you want me to do, except get married. And then I would live here with you, of course, and my wife and I would always be under your control."

"Draco, no." Narcissa spoke softly, but that could not disguise the tears that had sprung to her eyes. Draco flinched automatically, and then reminded himself that his mother could summon those tears at a moment's whim. She had done the same thing to the Dark Lord when he occupied the Manor, often as a means of convincing him that he had hurt her far more than he really had. "That is not what we wanted at all. We envisioned ourselves as a pure-blood family, living together with all the generations in one house, the way that our ancestors did. Your children will know us from their youngest years. Your wife will have our support and company when you are not present, as you will have ours when she is not. We will be able to teach your children without traveling a great distance to do so."

For a single moment, Draco could picture exactly what she was talking about. A contained society, an idyll within Malfoy Manor. Yes, it would be a way of life that their ancestors had nurtured and chosen over any other, and Draco could feel the attraction of it.

But those imagined walls could not stand against Harry and Severus's smiles. Draco shook his head. "I understand what you mean, but in _practice _it would work out so that you had control of my wife and me. I need more independence than that."

Lucius surged to his feet. Draco sat still in his chair out of old habit; when his father moved that fast, it meant he was seriously angry.

"If you want independence so badly," Lucius said, "you may have it. I want you out of the Manor in two hours."

Draco felt his mouth sag open. He knew it was unattractive and Severus would shake his head if he were here, but his father had genuinely stunned him. "You're kicking me out?" he asked.

"What part of my command to leave did you not understand?" Lucius was enjoying himself now, if the way he leaned back against his chair and planted a hand on his hip was any indication. "You _will _leave in the end, Draco. You cannot resist my power here. I can have the house-elves throw you out if you try."

Draco sat motionless, staring at his father for long moments. Then, against his will, he looked sideways at his mother, trying to determine if she would fight for him.

Narcissa sat with her hands still folded, her face cold and still. It seemed that it was more important for her to hide her emotions than to stand up for her only child.

Draco took a deep breath, and did something daring, something that he would not have been able to imagine only two days ago. He rose to his feet and gave a nod to Lucius that he thought would have done credit to a Wizengamot member faced with a law that undid every law he had ever fought for.

"Very well," he said. "As you wish it. I will leave in no more than an hour, so as not to cause you too much inconvenience." He turned away and made his way towards the stairs that led up to the first floor, though he was already planning to stop by the kitchens and ask for a basket of provisions. No one could cook where he was going like the Manor house-elves.

"Draco, stop!" Lucius had the ring of frigid authority in his voice, and Draco paid tribute to it by pausing in the middle of the room and gazing back at his father with wide eyes, not innocent, but scornful.

"I will, Father, but I'm not sure why you want me to," Draco told him. "After all, _you _were the one who ordered me out of the Manor."

"This is not what I wanted," Lucius said, looking even more stern, as if that would somehow make a difference when he had done something so offensive to Draco. "I wanted you to remain with us, as your mother said, long after you were married and a father in turn."

"Yes, yes." Draco waved his hand dismissively, delighted with the new role he was playing, but determined not to let that show on his face. If Lucius thought for one moment that Draco found pleasure in this unexpected reversal, he would know that it wasn't such a reversal after all, and he would take it away. "And I'm sure I can understand why the destruction of that vision should hurt you. I am not _so _lacking in empathy." He measured his words carefully and met Lucius's eyes with great meaning, so that his father could not miss who he thought _was _lacking in empathy. "But since I am not going to marry any simpering pure-blood witch and give you your first desire, I think it only fair that I should give you the second. I am leaving, Father. As you commanded," he added, and smiled charmingly.

He started off again.

"Halt!" Lucius snapped behind him, but Draco only laughed inwardly at his father's archaic diction and continued walking.

As he had suspected, neither of his parents pursued him out of the dining room. They had certain standards to maintain, and not being seen distressed by the house-elves was one of them.

Draco was perfectly happy for it to be so, since it gave him time to stop by the kitchens and order a large basket of food, along with spells that would magically preserve the food until removed from the basket. He had remembered the preservation spells ever since he had sneaked a basket to Hogwarts one year and awakened one morning with the smell of rotting fruit haunting his bedsheets.

The house-elves wept and squeaked and wrung their hands when they understood that he was leaving, but none of them refused to help. Until Lucius said otherwise, Draco was still part of the Malfoy family and entitled to their services. Draco stayed a few minutes to give his orders and to make sure that the elves had already started to fulfill them, and then went up to his bedchamber.

It was the work of a few moments to decide which robes he was taking along; he had few that he really _liked_, as opposed to many that were meant as formal wear and to impress other people. Then he opened his old school trunk and began to pack it with Potions books. Those were the most essential, given that the shop was supposed to open shortly and he would have to keep up with the brewing.

He took along a few items of sentimental value as well—old photographs, a school Snitch he had "liberated" from Hogwarts at the end of his last year there, and a lock of Pansy's hair that she had pressed on him to remember her by. Draco inhaled the scent with his nose a few inches from it and wondered what she would say when she learned what he was doing.

Probably laugh and then agree with his father. Draco shrugged and wrapped the lock of hair in a twist of paper to keep it safe. There were reasons that she had chosen her husband over him.

He glanced around his rooms one more time, and bade a silent farewell to the children who had inhabited it: the smug little boy who had been sure that he was the center of his parents' lives and they couldn't do anything that didn't involve him; the Hogwarts student who had spent his summers plotting revenge against Potter; the terrified Death Eater who had crawled up here and lain down for a few hours of nightmare-broken sleep; and the drifting, listless person he'd been in the last few years.

_I could have changed things so much sooner if I'd just tried, _Draco thought, as he shrank the trunk and put it in his pocket, then did one last sweep with his wand to make sure that nothing truly valuable had fallen behind the shelves or the bed. _I pretended I was depressed, but that's not true. All _I _needed was a good kick in the arse._

He walked towards the window and cast a Summoning spell that would pull in his broom, his Quidditch leathers, and a few other possessions from the shed outside. His owl, Endymion, came floating in from the Owlery and gave a questioning hoot.

"Yes, we're off," Draco told him, with a scratch to his ears. He smiled. "And won't Potter be surprised to see me."

*

Harry blinked. He'd had so many strange-looking autograph seekers on his porch in his time that he thought nothing could surprise him anymore, but he should have realized that wasn't the case.

"Hullo," Draco said. He was carrying a broom and had an owl on one shoulder, and he brushed past Harry and into his house like he owned the place. He cast a glance around at the walls and the floor and, seemingly, everything else in the main room, and sniffed. "Not much, but needs must when one's parents have got rid of one," he said, and fired off a few spells, sending his broom and the first of what seemed to be several trunks to various corners of the room.

Turning around and leaning on the door for support, Harry pounced on this first indication of a possible explanation. "Your parents kicked you out? Why?"

"For dating you and Severus," Draco said, and smiled sweetly over his shoulder. "I hope that you're a good cook, but I've come prepared in case you aren't," he added, and placed a large basket on the floor.

Harry shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and held it while he counted to twenty. That had never really helped to tame his anger, but it made him act on it in more constructive ways. When he opened his eyes, he could ask the questions that he needed to ask.

"Why the fuck did you come here, Malfoy?" he asked, and it was in a calm voice, not the scream that he wanted to use. "Surely you have friends who could shelter you."

"Not so many, these days, when they're all obsessed with their jobs or their families." Draco cocked his head to the side as if studying a patch of wall Harry had left bare, then nodded and waved his wand. A shelf sprang out of nowhere, and Draco opened another trunk and began unpacking his books. He shot Harry a look that cut through the swinging strands of blond hair in front of his face and made him appear cool and distant and sophisticated. "And it's _Draco_."

Harry sighed. "Right. I knew that." He groped for another solution; he had known that things would change when he decided that he wanted to date two men, but this wasn't one of the ones he had counted on. "Why not take shelter with Severus?"

Draco straightened up and stared at him. "In that tiny room he has? When he can barely house _himself_? Don't be stupid."

Harry felt his face burn, and he nodded feebly. He should have thought of that, especially since he'd been up to Severus's room.

"I'm going to expect you to clean up after yourself, Malf—Draco," he warned when he saw Draco standing back with his hands on his hips and studying the corners of the main room. "No house-elves here."

Draco gave him a beaming smile. "Oh, I know. But it won't be harder to achieve a higher standard of cleanliness than _this_." He swept his hand around in a circle, and Harry followed the gesture with a frown. A few things were dusty, but he had them neatly arranged, and he cast the Cleaning Charms at least once a week. He really didn't see what Draco could find to object to.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked defensively. "I like it this way." The room was full of chairs where his friends could sit when they came by, a circle of them that would hold the entire Weasley family, and it had a big fireplace. On one side was the door that led into the kitchen. There was a small shelf with some of his books, mostly mindless wizarding novels that he liked to grab when he sat by the fire at night, and the table nearest the kitchen held his wireless. There was _nothing _wrong with it.

"You have no decorations," Draco said with the kind of exaggerated patient tone that Harry had heard him use on Crabbe and Goyle at Hogwarts. "Where are your portraits? Your photographs? Your landscapes?" He paused, and a sneer crept into his voice. "Your Order of Merlin?"

"_That _thing is packed away and won't be seeing the light of day ever again," Harry said firmly. "Not even you could think it was less than hideously ugly."

Draco laughed. "Maybe you do have some taste after all," he murmured. "But seriously, Harry, I can't live like this. Let me decorate for you."

"What would you put up?" Harry demanded. "I don't know that I can trust your taste, either."

Draco cocked his head to the side and smiled enigmatically. "Let me show you, and then you can see."

Harry groaned. It would be simpler to give in than to argue about it, especially when he _didn't care_, so he nodded. "Fine. Now. Do you still have access to a vault of your own, or are you going to depend on the money that we make from the shop?"

Draco blinked. "I can't imagine that my parents would strip me of my vault. Or be able to, for that matter. The one I own is given to each heir when he comes of age, and my father doesn't have the power to take it back."

"Good," Harry said shortly. "Then you're going to be paying me rent of a Galleon a week."

"_What_?" Draco squawked, his hair almost appearing to stand on end like ruffled feathers. "You're mad! I could get a room in the Leaky Cauldron and all the food I wanted for a week with that kind of money! Plus someone to clean up after me." He again gave Harry's main room a scornful glance.

"Then why don't you?" Harry folded his arms.

There was a long standoff where Draco glared, apparently under the assumption that it would change things, and Harry stood there implacably. Then Draco heaved a great, put-upon sigh and dug into his pocket, pulling out a Galleon that he tossed at Harry. Harry caught it and nodded to him.

"I do cook," he said. "And well. But it's going to be up to you whether you want to eat it." He cast another glance at the basket Draco had carried in. "It seems you have more than enough supplies there to last you."

Draco was smirking again in a moment, complacent in a fashion Harry had to bite his lip to keep from telling him was unattractive. "This is from the Manor house-elves," he said. "They can cook better than the ones at Hogwarts. I was continually in agonies when I was at school, for fear that the elves there would create something that would upset my delicate stomach." Ignoring Harry's snort, he dug in the basket. "You _have _to taste this," he added, taking something out and tossing it to Harry.

Harry surveyed it with a jaundiced eye. It appeared to be an apple that had barely survived its encounter with the teeth of a rabid crocodile. It had slits in it that were stuffed full of sugar and roasted nuts and Merlin knew what else. Harry caught a glimpse of something yellow that he was sure wasn't natural.

"Take a bite," Draco urged him when he stood there, with the increasing temptation to drop the apple on the floor.

Harry took a look at him and sighed. Exasperating or not, this was the man who was his—boyfriend, or partner, for right now, and who would be one of his lovers soon. Harry _had _wanted a challenge. Besides, this was probably not the strangest thing Draco would ask him to do. He lifted the apple to his mouth and bit.

A moment later, he was greedily devouring it, trying to understand how so many different kinds of sweetness could exist in such a small space, while Draco laughed and stood there with bright, smug eyes.

"Good, isn't it?" he asked when Harry finished and licked his fingers. Then he paused, and his eyes turned even brighter. Harry looked at him, struggling with his pride; he wanted to ask for another apple, but wasn't sure he could stand to.

Then Draco took a few steps forwards. Harry froze, unsure of what would happen next.

Draco took his chin in a gentle but firm hand and kissed him. He darted his tongue into Harry's half-open mouth, as if to gather the taste of the sugar and sweetness, and then a moan vibrated out of his throat and into Harry's.

Harry reacted after only a moment of standing there stupidly, which he thought was an improvement over what had happened the last time one of his dates kissed him. He fisted his hands in Draco's hair and licked and kissed and bit at his lips, nipping hard enough that Draco gave a little squeal and acted as if he would draw back. But Harry didn't want to let him go, and increased the pressure of his tongue and his hold until Draco gave in and let him control the kiss.

When they pulled back, they were panting, and Harry was glad Draco couldn't feel how hard he was. Draco stared at him and then began to smirk.

Harry, however, was thinking of something else.

"How is Snape going to feel about this?" he demanded.

"_Severus, _Harry," Draco corrected, running his fingers through Harry's hair and catching at a snarl that he yanked. Harry cursed and stumbled closer to him, and Draco caught him with one arm, his smirk broadening. Harry pushed away in irritation, and Draco laughed, a bolt of sound that he didn't _need _to know ran straight to Harry's groin.

"Fine, then, Severus," Harry said, folding his arms and doing his best to appear stern, so that Draco wouldn't get any ideas about what he could and couldn't do. "But he won't like us living together and kissing on our own, will he?"

"Why should he mind it?" Draco reached out again, and as Harry shifted to the side, only managed to brush his palm down the middle of Harry's shoulder. That appeared to be enough for him, for he sighed deeply and then gave most of his attention to the conversation. "We're all lovers now. Would _you_ mind it if I'd gone to him instead and we were kissing and touching when you weren't there?"

Harry refused to pay attention to the sharp squirm of jealousy that said, yes, he would mind it, and strongly. "Haven't you seen the way he looks at us?" he asked.

"As if he desires us? Yes, of course." Draco gave a fluid shrug. He was watching Harry's shoulder with a fixed stare. Glancing down, Harry could see nothing important there, save perhaps that his shirt had shifted aside and revealed part of his collarbone. He tugged it back up, and this time Draco's sigh was disappointed.

"As if he could become jealous very easily," Harry said. "Almost as soon as he could after you and I had talked, he wanted to talk to me, in private. I think he saw us and did that on purpose. He won't like feeling left out."

Draco scowled and opened his mouth to argue, then closed it and appeared to consider carefully. "Maybe you're right, at that," he said at last. "But he's got to see that I need to live _somewhere_, and his rooms are just too small."

Harry took a deep breath. His head was spinning with his own madness, and he hesitated, about to take his suggestion back on the brink of making it.

Then he shook his head and plowed ahead. Who was supposed to be the brave one in this strange partnership, if not him?

"Listen," he said. "What if—I mean, I have enough money. Severus even glances at me sometimes as if he wonders why in the world I want to own my own business, when I have a few fortunes locked away—"

"Get to the point, Potter." Draco's eyes had narrowed and his arms had folded as if he suspected, somehow, that Harry intended to play a trick on him and didn't want to be caught unawares.

"What if we all lived together?" Harry blurted out. "I have enough to buy a bigger house, and I'd miss this one, but I could keep it as a kind of private retreat if I wanted, and—"

Draco stepped towards him and touched his arm, his fingers spreading out in an intimate, distracting way that was quite enough to shut Harry up. "Be still," he whispered.

Harry went still, miserable that he had made the suggestion now. Obviously, Draco was unused to sharing a small space with just one person; why would he want to make it two? He had probably come to Harry's house only because he knew the pleasures of inconveniencing Harry would outweigh the inconveniences for himself.

Then Draco's fingers tightened into a warm clasp like a bracelet, and Harry looked up.

Draco's face was less than an inch from his, and his smile was so bright and soft that Harry nearly looked to the door to see if Severus had arrived. It was impossible to believe that he could be the source of something so wonderful.

"That's a marvelous idea," Draco breathed, and he soundly kissed Harry again.

_I could get used to this, _Harry thought, bringing his fingers up and locking them through Draco's hair. _I really could._


	7. Chapter 7

Severus had always had a sense of himself, a perception like that of space or gravity, that kept him firm and still even when the world around him had decided to spin. He had clung to that sense that _some _things were sane when he spied on the Dark Lord for Dumbledore, when Dumbledore used his guilt over Lily's death to command him into risky actions, when he had been protecting a young, arrogant boy who had no reason to care whether Severus lived or died.

That perception of himself meant that certain things were true. He lived alone. He brewed potions. He had to deal with heavy burdens, among them guilt, that he could never share with anyone else. He had no friends, few people who cared for him in any way other than as their Head of House or an obstacle to be overcome. He dwelt in his own mind, and he found so much space and food there that it seemed a shame ever to leave it.

But now that perception had received a severe shaking. When both Draco and _Harry_ had come to the shop that morning and told him this mad plan of buying a house together, he had to sit still and think about what it meant, that he would be living with other people.

And not just anyone else. His lovers. Both younger than he was, both male, both considerably more famous and elevated in their own ways than he was.

He did not fear that, not exactly. He had outworn fear when he lay, supposedly dying, of a bite from Nagini, and everything that might have frightened him after that was more an inconvenience than anything else. But he did wonder how much they would make him lose his sense of himself if they all lived together.

Severus opened his mouth to refuse.

Then _Harry_, as he seemed to insist on being called, leaned forwards and stared up at him with those appealing green eyes, and Severus found the words drifting away from him, lost.

And then he began to remember other changes, other holes, in that invincible perception of himself, that had already occurred. He had shared those heavy burdens of guilt and Lily's memory with Harry already. And Harry had not mocked him, had tried to thank him, and had backed away when Severus made it clear that he did not want to be thanked.

One change could perhaps give him the courage to make others. And this was less painful, altogether, than dealing with Dumbledore, about whom five years had not given enough time for Severus's feelings to settle.

"Please," Harry breathed. "That's the only way I can think of for us all to be together enough to make a real go of this. And I _want _to make a real go of this." He flushed, and his cheeks were brilliant. "There's no—I mean, I understand if you want to refuse. But Draco and I both want this."

"And you think that should be enough reason for me to do so?" Severus sneered and finally found himself able to turn away from Harry's eyes, at least enough to lift the glass of water that stood beside him and which he had not so much as sipped from.

"It's more than that," Draco said, his arrogant, easy manner giving Severus the antidote he needed right now for too much of Harry's earnestness. "There's a reason I never tried to stay with more than one person for a large amount of time. It's too volatile. It changes. I don't think we should try to live with two of us in one house and one in another. That's prone to too much jealousy and charges of special treatment."

Harry snorted, and Severus suspected that idea had not come from Draco at first. But Harry nodded in confirmation and support.

"I think we would feel more comfortable if we tried to live together, instead of leaving anybody out," he said.

"Or you would feel more comfortable, at least," Severus said, in the most vicious drawl he could manage. Part of him was inclined to curse himself even as he spoke, but another part, one that understood better the weaknesses and flaws in his temper, knew this was necessary. His partners could not run from him every time he said something they didn't like. "It would be a balm for your conscience."

Harry flushed and opened his mouth to retort, but it was Draco who got there first, his voice slicing in like a flooded river that suddenly cut between two people who had been trying to hurt each other.

"It's the _sensible _thing," he said. "We would have a greater amount of privacy. I need a home since I've left the Manor, and you could use more space. And just think of it." He leaned forwards, and Severus found himself responding almost without thought to the low, smooth, persuasive tones of his voice. "We could touch each other whenever we wanted, and no one could trouble us."

"Of course you would think that most important," Severus said, when he had recovered from the delicious shock the words gave him.

Draco said nothing, simply glanced down Severus's body. Severus understood the message in a moment. Draco would not be so cruel as to speak the words aloud and embarrass Severus in front of Harry, with whom he still had the most fragile relationship, but he knew Severus had not escaped reacting to Draco's implication.

"There's another advantage," Harry persisted. "If we buy a house that's for all three of us, I won't think of it as my private space. We can change it in any way we need to, and that means expanding rooms or putting in a potions lab if there isn't one. We can make it _our _space, not mine."

Severus turned to look at him. "And would you retain your own house?"

"Of course," Harry said, with a faint smile. "I don't know if it's best for my friends to meet with you for a while. And this way, any of us could go there to be by ourselves when it got to be a bit too much—as long as Draco can stand the undecorated walls." He rolled his eyes at Draco, who looked smugly pleased with himself.

Severus shook his head, but not in disapproval, and he could not find no words for his incredulity except, "I would not have thought you envisioned the possibility of its all becoming a bit too much."

Harry met his eyes soberly, without the scorn that Severus suspected he would have liked to put there. "We're all grown men who are used to being by ourselves, and have our own reasons to value privacy. And none of us anticipated this. It would be stupid to assume that we can just jump cheerfully into it and that we'll never need an escape."

Severus settled back into his chair, and said nothing. It was hard to find a way to phrase his new idea—that he was relieved to find _neither _of his lovers was an idiot—so that it sounded complimentary.

"Why are you so willing to try this?" he asked instead when the urge to blurt out his thoughts had passed, looking between Harry and Draco.

"Because I think it can work," Draco said.

"Because I want both of you," Harry said.

Even Draco, Severus was pleased to see, arched his neck a bit at that, and turned so as to present Harry with his most favorable profile.

"It's not the easiest thing in the world," Harry said. "Maybe not the best. But it's what I want." He nodded to Severus. "And you were the one who made me think I should reach for the things I want, instead of drifting along and hoping vaguely it might happen someday."

"You will blame this on me, then." Severus was trying to keep from smiling, but it was difficult.

"You can put it that way, if you like." Harry shrugged and smiled, his eyes so direct that Severus had to fight the urge to flinch away from them. "I prefer to think that I'm giving you the credit for starting all this."

"You were the only one who could have done it," Draco added, in soft, flattering accents. "Unless you think that either of us is capable of as much good sense and discretion as you have."

"I did not know what I was beginning," Severus said. "I felt the urge to thank Harry. So I did. It was nothing more than that."

"And nothing less," Harry said, with a smile that Severus found intolerably self-satisfied. "So. Does that mean that you'll move into the house with us?"

Severus knew he was lost, and he did not object to being so.

*

Draco stood in the door of the small house in Hogsmeade and looked around smugly. The owner had been more than eager to sell when Harry came in with an offer of Galleons and sweet smiles and pretty words about how convenient it would be. The expression on her face when Severus and Draco appeared a few minutes after the sale had been completed, and the pleading way she had turned to Harry, were sights that Draco would always remember.

The house had two floors only, but considering that it was large and the rooms were many, Draco didn't find that as confining as he had thought he would after the Manor (and it was certainly much better than Harry's confined little hole of a house). The first floor had a narrow corridor that opened out into a circle of rooms: kitchen, dining room, drawing room, and two rooms with doors at either end that the previous owner had used as studies. One of those would become Severus's potions lab, and Draco was thinking of using the smaller one as a library. Otherwise, it would be the room to which they would banish Harry's friends, if any of them were obnoxious enough to come visiting.

Upstairs were the bathrooms, the bedrooms, a second library, and a room with walls of stone and a door of steel that Draco knew had probably been used as a training room, or—from certain heavy scents around it—for experiments in Dark magic. What would they do with all that space? Harry had asked, and Draco and Severus had exchanged amused glances. Gryffindors had such cramped views of what was possible.

Finally, the house extended out into a walkway from the first floor that ran straight into a greenhouse surrounded with glass. The owner had removed all her plants, but that was all right; it left them more space to grow Severus's Potions ingredients. And Draco was dreaming of flowers from the Manor gardens, which he could ask the house-elves to cut for him. Even if Lucius had taken the trouble to countermand most orders Draco would give, he could not have anticipated that one. For Lucius, flowers were something to ornament extensive gardens only. He could not comprehend that someone might want them even in a small space.

"Isn't it brilliant?"

Draco laughed despite himself as Harry burst out of the room that might be his friends' and grinned at Draco. Draco started to respond, but Harry turned his back and pelted upstairs, leaving him no opportunity.

"He is a storm of energy."

Draco turned. Severus stood in the doorway of what would be his lab, and the intense narrowing of his eyes, as though he were facing strong sunlight, was meant to hide his pleasure Draco knew that, and told him so.

Severus did not respond, but stared at him so intently Draco began to regret his teasing. Then he stepped forwards. Draco tensed his muscles, and then reminded himself that this was Severus, who had never hurt him, whose intervention had saved his life when the Dark Lord wanted to kill Draco for not killing Dumbledore. He put his chin up and stood there, hard and hardy, waiting.

Severus's kiss was regulated, almost cold, where Harry's had been hasty and passionate, and the taste of his mouth completely different. For Draco, that did not matter. It was still _him_, and _he _was a man Draco had admired and yearned to imitate long before he ever thought about him in a sexual way. The hesitation with which he reached up and cradled Severus's head came purely from worry that he would not do it in a way Severus liked and would manage to put him off.

At the touch on his scalp, Severus gripped Draco's shoulders with stained fingers and dug in hard. Pleased, Draco did it some more, and Severus nearly threw him to the ground with the pressure of his lips.

The sound of Harry's feet on the steps made them spring apart as though they were doing something wrong, and they watched each other, panting harshly. Severus stopped panting after a moment, of course, and turned to greet their third with some coolness.

"You room will do to your satisfaction?" Severus asked.

Harry laughed giddily and actually spun in a circle, as though he were still a schoolboy at Hogwarts, his arms extended but his hands coming short of actually touching the walls. Draco felt his breath increase its pace as he watched him, and not simply because of the leftover breathlessness from Severus's kiss. He was mad. He was beautiful. To be with him would be like running through tame fire.

"It's enormous," Harry said, stopping his spin and grinning at them. "And it's in green and silver."

Draco blinked. "Perhaps the woman who lived here had a child in Slytherin. Well, of course, since the house belongs to you, you can redecorate it."

Harry shook his head, still with that mad grin. "Why should I want to? It'll be good for that small, buried part of me, I think."

Draco felt somewhat foolish glancing to the side, until he caught Severus's eye and realized that Severus had anticipated him. "What do you mean?" Severus asked. Draco heard the icicle-sharp disbelief in his voice, the same disbelief Draco was feeling himself. What in the Chosen One, their chosen who had approached them in openness and longing, was Slytherin?

Harry laughed, but stopped when he saw what must have been the genuinely offended expressions on their faces. "Oh, sorry," he said. "I didn't think about it. But you wouldn't know." He shrugged, and even though Draco was sure he really was sorry for laughing, a smile chased itself around the corners of his mouth that showed his delight in what he was telling them. "The Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin."

Draco blinked several times. Severus remained coolly poised and said simply, "That is not possible."

Harry shook his head. "I was so nervous when I went to Hogwarts, I thought they were going to send me home any minute. I wanted to prove that I belonged there. The Hat sensed that and told me I could be great in Slytherin. But—" He raised an eyebrow at Draco. "I'd already met you, you remember."

Draco felt flattered rather than offended, and for no reason that he thought Harry would understand. It was something, though, to know that that meeting on the train had influenced Harry as profoundly as it had influenced him, if in the opposite direction.

"It asked me if I was sure a few times, and then put me in Gryffindor." Harry shrugged again. "In second year, it told me it still thought I could be a good Slytherin. But it never asked me again." He paused reflectively. "Of course, I never talked to it again after that."

Severus was silent, and Draco could not read the flame burning in his eyes.

*

Severus made sure to remain behind after the second breakfast they ate together, strange and mostly silent and full of speculating glances, in the kitchen of their new house. Draco went off immediately to refashion the second unused room on the ground floor into a library, which they had decided it was to be. Pot—Harry remained at the table for a moment, his hands folded behind his head as he leaned back in his chair and studied the walls.

"We'll have to take that paper off, of course," he said, as if talking to himself. "It can't stay."

Severus privately agreed; the paper was yellow with electric blue flowers, absolutely, absurdly hideous. But he was not interested in discussing the paper right now. He leaned forwards and caught Harry's eye. Harry let his words die and turned his head. His arm muscles tensed and then released again with an almost audible snap, as if he thought that he might have to duel and then was giving up the notion.

"We have much to speak of, you and I," Severus said.

"Do we?" Harry kept his voice quiet and easy, like the falling of a small river. "I wasn't aware that we did. More than I and Draco did, for example."

"We do," Severus said. "We must. You never told me about almost being put in Slytherin."

From the still white astonishment that settled over his face, that was not at all the question Harry had thought he would ask, or the one he was afraid of. Severus spared a wistful moment to wonder what he _had_ feared, then settled into pursuing the course he had chosen.

"Why would that be important?" Harry asked at last. "Besides, I'm sure that you could understand why I didn't. It would have meant a lot of teasing from both Slytherins and Gryffindors while I was at school, and since then, Houses haven't been nearly as important as I once assumed they were." He sneered, though Severus was sure it wasn't at him. "Some people act as though you're Gryffindor or Slytherin forever once you've been one, but of course that isn't true."

"I would have wanted to know," Severus said. "It means a sort of kinship to Draco and I, a kinship that would have made me feel that you were less distant from us, alien."

"If I'm an alien, then why agree to live with me? Date me?" Harry leaned forwards, all bristling Gryffindor aggressiveness.

But the Sorting Hat had seen something different. Severus retained that fact in mind as he arched an eyebrow. "Slytherins stick more together than most for reasons you know," he said. "I was not displeased when you proposed living and dating together, but I remained surprised. Suspicious. I do not want to grow closer to Draco than to you, if we are to be together truly. And I suspect that is what will happen, as long as I do not think I can trust you as much as I can trust Draco."

Harry laughed bitterly. "What else do I have to do to show you that I can be trusted?"

Severus leaned back in his chair and placed his fingertips contemplatively on his chin. He was trying to understand many things: why this small secret so mattered, why he was forcing this issue now instead of waiting and seeing whether Harry could be trusted in the future, why he had wanted to hold this conversation in private with Harry instead of with Draco.

Why his heart raced so at the flash in Harry's eyes.

"What else about you is Slytherin?" Severus asked at last. "Did you ever regret choosing against our House? Would it have been so terrible, to be part of it?"

"Well, I don't know," Harry drawled. "D'you think I would have _survived _your House, instead of being murdered by someone on your Dark Lord's orders before I was seventeen?"

Severus put his hands flat on the table to control some of his anger. "You know that not all of my students were Death Eaters," he said.

"And you know that some of them existed," Harry said. "Enough to have made my life miserable if they wanted to, even if they never killed me." He leaned forwards across the table. "Listen. I don't want to say that Slytherins are never good, or that I would have killed myself if I was one. That was the kind of stupid shite I used to believe. But I don't want to say that your House would have been _right _for me either. I survived being in Gryffindor, and I found my two best friends. That's enough."

"But your lovers are Slytherins," Severus said. He would maintain calm. He would remember that there was some likeness to them in Harry after all, though at the moment it seemed buried deep. "What does that say about you?"

"That I've left House distinctions behind?" Harry shook his head so hard that his fringe dangled into his eyes and made him look like a shaggy, ungroomed dog. "I'd like to think so, at least. What do they matter next to living in the adult world?" He scrambled to his feet, an uncoordinated movement. "Listen, I'm going to work in the greenhouse. I know a lot about planting seeds." He turned towards the kitchen door.

"Running from an argument?" Severus whispered.

Harry paused. Then he braced an arm against the door and turned about. "No," he said. "I simply don't see the point of this one. I told you something that doesn't really matter a lot but lets you know me better, and you're acting as though it's some deep, important secret that defines my mind and soul. Why?"

"Because it brings you closer to us," Severus said. "Slytherin House was the most important influence in my life, and Draco's, for years. How could it be otherwise? Draco was taught that it would form his character. I was Head and each year had to guide my students through deep waters, made worse by the return of the Dark Lord and Dumbledore's favoritism of _your_ House. He favored the Gryffindors," he added sharply when he saw Harry open his mouth. "Do not deny it."

"I'm not," Harry said. He peered at Severus, then said, "If it matters that much to you, then maybe I can answer your original question."

Severus had nearly forgotten his original question, but he clasped his hands again and inclined his head. Far be it from him to interfere with something that might allow them to get along better.

"What else about me is Slytherin?" Harry wound his fingers together in complex patterns that made his knuckles crack. "Well. I like to keep secrets. There are things that most people don't know about me, and there's really no reason not to tell them. I mean, I don't think the people I'm hiding the secrets from would betray me or anything like that. I just—haven't told them."

Severus leaned forwards and tried to convey his interest with wide eyes. It must not have worked quite the way he wished, because Harry gave him a wry look before continuing.

"I had to learn to sneak around a bit during the past few years, if I was going to keep anything about me private. I like clever plans. I just can't always think them up myself." Another shake of his head that left his fringe dangling into his eyes. "I used to have big ambitions. I was going to be a brilliant Auror, I was going to be a Quidditch player. Then I changed my mind, and tried to shrink my ambitions to fit into a more normal life, but they used to be there."

"Why shrink them?" Severus demanded. He was baffled. He had known that the Boy-Who-Lived had not taken the direction in life that anyone would have predicted of him. He had become a ward-maker, no more than that, and lived in a small house instead of the grand one that he could have afforded. He made appointments to serve people who used to be his enemies. He dodged the newspaper reporters, and never responded to the scandals that linked his name to many others'. "You could have had anything you wanted."

"Partly, I was tired of all the attention," Harry said quietly. "If I was an Auror or a Quidditch player, it would never stop. I would always be in the papers for some reason or another, and I wouldn't have any _peace_."

Severus shook his head, but stayed quiet. He could not imagine tiring of positive attention. Of the kind that declared him a Death Eater and the memories that had cleared him, including Harry's and Dumbledore's, false, he had tired in the first hour.

"And partly, I started thinking that I didn't really _deserve _everything they were heaping on me," Harry went on in a thoughtful, abstracted tone, staring over Severus's head with eyes that made Severus certain he no longer really saw the room in front of him. "What did I do? Not defeat the Death Eaters, or Voldemort himself, in a grand battle. Not cast some spell that no one had ever heard of before, that showed off my cleverness. Not do anything but die once, the way Dumbledore said I had to, and taunt Voldemort. That's it. Anyone could have done it if they'd had the Horcrux in them."

Severus blinked. Then he closed his eyes. He could not believe that he was about to reassure Harry _bloody _Potter, though he would also once have believed that there was no way the boy's ego could be so fragile as to need it.

"Not many people would have done it," he said repressively, so that they might be finished with this nonsense that was Potter's suppressing himself out of uncertainty and a sense of inadequacy as soon as possible. "They would not have the bravery. They would not have died in such a way to keep others safe from Voldemort in the first place, and they would not have been able to think of surrendering their lives, no matter the good to the world that might result from it."

He opened his eyes to see what effect his argument would have, only to be met with a slow, infuriating shake of Harry's head.

"That's what I thought, too," Harry said. "But then I started thinking about it, like I said. I wasn't especially brave or intelligent or wonderful in the end. It was just duty. Nothing more. I wasn't fighting against overwhelming odds and temptation to quit like you were, either, sir. Severus," he corrected, when Severus turned his head. "In the end, I wanted Voldemort gone because it would make _my_ life better. That was my motivation, before saving the world. That was my first reason. What kind of hero does that?"

Severus lowered his eyes to the table, because he knew that he could not disguise the satisfaction in his expression, and he was worried that Harry would take it the wrong way, if he noticed at all.

_What kind of hero does that? _

A Slytherin hero—or, at the very least, the sort of hero that Slytherins could understand. Someone who had his own self-interest in heart in addition to other motives, and managed to acknowledge that it lay there, like a night-blooming flower that most people would never see. Someone who had looked his selfishness in the face and come out perhaps subdued, but not trying to deny it.

Harry's solution, of course, was pure foolishness. He had no reason or right to suppress his ambitions and deny himself the things he wanted simply because he had not lived up to his own impossible standards of perfection, or Dumbledore's.

But the foolishness was another reassurance. It mixed with the Slytherin aspects of Harry and rendered his character a solution that Severus could forgive himself for mistaking for a draft of pure Gryffindor. Otherwise, he would not have stopped wondering if he could have noticed, earlier, and brought the Chosen One more to sympathy with the Slytherins. If Harry was disguised and had only come to realization of his selfishness in the last few years, though, no wonder.

"Do you still think that you should give up what you want?" he asked quietly. "Would you give Draco and me up if your friends asked you to?"

Harry oriented on him, and abruptly his face drained of color. "No," he said. "How could you think—well, I can see how you would think, but—no. Of course not."

"You gave up your dearest dreams because you thought you did not deserve more," Severus said, determined to push him. If he understood the Slytherin in Harry, he should also understand the Gryffindor. "That speaks of a sacrificial bent to your nature that I do not like. As if you had to do penance for having your own desires."

"They're not my dearest dreams anymore," Harry said, and this time his smile was painful. "I—that was my reason at first for training to be a ward-maker and walking away from the Auror program. It was the reason I gave my friends, and they told me that yes, I was a hero and they hugged me, and then they _left me alone_ about my decision. And for the first few months that I was out of the Auror program, I really did think that I would always miss it, and that I had given up what I wanted as some kind of punishment.

"But I realized that I didn't want to be an Auror, I wanted to be a ward-maker. The problem was, I couldn't explain _why_. I was sick of chasing Dark wizards and I was fascinated with defensive magic. And Ron and Hermione and the Weasleys wouldn't have been satisfied without a reason. I had invented that explanation about not deserving more to keep them off my back and give myself an excuse, and I believed it for a while because I had to believe it." Harry shrugged and glanced away. "Then I came slowly to a realization of how self-motivated even that decision was, just like my decision to fight Voldemort. Like I said, I believed those reasons at first because I had to believe them, because they were a way to construct a fiction for myself that I could live with. If I wasn't a great hero, I was at least someone modest enough to renounce all the rewards they wanted to pour on my head. When I was ready, I decided that wasn't true, either, and I just didn't _want _the rewards or for them to use me as a Dark-magic fighter for the rest of my life. But saying it would have made me sound—and feel, for a while—like an ungrateful little shit." His fingers curled into his palms. "So I changed my mind and accepted what I really wanted, but then I got stuck in a holding pattern and didn't know where to go from there. Your kindness was what woke me up." He lifted his head, and a vivid blush stained his cheeks. "You're the first one I've ever said this to. Appropriate that it should be you, though, because you're the one who started me on the path to realizing a different kind of dream."

Severus sat still for a moment, and then closed his eyes. Sitting like that, where he would not _immediately _betray the emotions that danced in him, he allowed the exaltation to come.

To be trusted with a secret that it sounded as though Potter had torn whole from the innards of his soul, with pieces of flesh and strings of blood still clinging to it, and set down still trembling and beating before him—

To know that _no one else _knew this about their precious Chosen One, their hero who so many people sighed for, about whom they all agreed that he had given up a grand and brilliant life for the "quiet, normal, uninteresting" life of a ward-maker—

To see those green eyes looking at him, half-dazed with the bewilderment of speaking so much, half-wet with vulnerability, and to know that Harry would not have said so much if Severus had not dug deep, to know that he might not even have thought this through fully until he admitted it now, that he was hearing his own reasons for the first time—

_This _was triumph. There was nothing in Severus's life that could compare to it, though perhaps the morning after he opened his eyes and realized that he had not died in the grip of Nagini's coils was a close second.

He rose to his feet and stepped away from the table. Only then did he open his eyes.

Harry stood against the door, his hands in his robe pockets now, staring at him. For some reason, it heightened Severus's desire when he saw that this moment had not been one of intense realization for Harry the way it had for him. That made the triumph his alone. He could lock it in a secret box of his soul and only take it out when he wanted to admire it.

"Come here," Severus said. His voice was deepened with the things he felt, and he did not recognize it.

Harry hesitated, then strode towards him. He was trying to act as if he weren't nervous, but his eyes darted around the room, revealing him. He halted in front of Severus and tilted his head up with an expression of bravado that Severus was certain he would shatter at any moment with ill-timed words.

Severus kissed him.

This was not the powerful, passionate, awkward kiss Harry had given him in his shop. This was one he had initiated, and it _was _an initiation, to the depths of what he could deliver, what he could do for a lover if he _wanted _to. He parted his lips after a moment of bending Harry's neck with the force of them when shut and snaked his tongue out, curling it around Harry's, scraping his teeth, his gums, the roof of his mouth, half the bottom when Harry's tongue moved out of the way like a startled animal.

Harry made a soft, muffled sound. Severus did not move his hands up to grip Harry's shoulders, partially because he wanted to show what he could do with his mouth alone and no other touch, and partially because he understood the sound.

He leaned in, and bent his own neck, and poured what he felt through his mouth, as far as that was possible.

Harry broke free at last, and reeled away. Severus watched him with calm, patient eyes as he looked about him, lifting one hand as if to wipe his lips and then stopping. He turned his head and stared at Severus with wide eyes.

Severus nodded to him.

Harry whirled and fled from the room, heels drumming. Severus was not surprised and not offended. Like him, Harry had come face-to-face with a revelation that he was, perhaps, not equipped to handle. Severus would have been scarcely able to face what he had learned this morning if he had clung to a shred more of his hatred for James Potter, or if he had not been able to think of some similarities between Slytherins and Gryffindors on his own, or if he had wanted Harry a notch less and so had not felt such intense triumph.

Severus sat down in his chair and smiled into the distance, picking up the last of his glass to swallow the mouthful of orange juice at the bottom. His victory flavored it.


	8. Chapter 8

Harry leaned his forehead against the warmed wall of the greenhouse and panted. His body felt as if it were on fire, his muscles aching though they hadn't been frozen, his tongue numb in the front and tingling with sensation at the back.

How did—why would Snape—

How had that _happened_?

Harry coughed. His throat stung now as if he had swallowed too much lemonade, and it took some persuasion to make his legs support him again. But he had come here to do more than think about the kiss between himself and—and Severus—and he wanted to look around. The greenhouse was one of the most interesting parts of their new home for him, and if he could find something that would distract him from his pressing thoughts anywhere, it would be here.

He looked around, and felt his eyes widen.

The greenhouse was full of pots, trays, tables, and also one large bed of dirt that seemed to be in a low, continuous pot, but looked as if it were floating just above the ground itself. Nodding flowers rose from that bed, looking like lilies, though too big for them. Leafy green heads projected out of the pots. The tables held packets of seeds, shears, gloves, and a book whose spine said _Gardening Charms._

"I knew they'd made some progress here," Harry muttered, thinking of the way he'd heard Draco and Sn—Severus—talking about planting Potions ingredients in the greenhouse. "I didn't think it was this much."

"Do you like it?"

Harry whirled around. He had been sure he was alone, or he wouldn't have spoken aloud. Too many times, some harmless thing he'd been muttering to himself had been reported in the papers under a concerned headline of, "_Is Our Savior Going Mad_?" and a photograph of him with his eyes darting in as many directions as possible.

But Draco unfolded himself from behind the nearest large table and stood there looking at him. Harry would have felt better about it if he could have been sure of what emotion was narrowing Draco's eyes and tightening his face.

But he couldn't, so he gulped and plunged ahead. "Yeah. I came here to plant some seeds, but you don't need much help, do you? I thought you were in the library," he added lamely, and tried to smile, and knew he failed.

"I went there first," Draco said. "But I need to look up several spells that I don't feel like looking up this morning. I wanted to work with my hands first." He smiled at Harry and picked up a pair of gloves from the table, tossing them to him. "You can help. Start working."

Harry pulled on the gloves and did what Draco told him. It wasn't much different from what they'd done in Herbology—examining seeds to make sure their cases weren't damaged, sorting various mysterious leaves by size, and watering some of the tall, nodding flowers. Harry could have asked questions, and he thought Draco was waiting for him to, but he wanted the simple, soothing silence, and he embraced it.

Several times, he could feel Draco watching him, but he didn't look up to meet his eyes. He wanted to forget about Severus's kiss and his own reaction to it if he could. It embarrassed him. Why _should _he have reacted so strongly to a touch from a man he had known he was taking as his lover?

Why shouldn't he?

Why was he here? What was he doing here, anyway? Shouldn't he have resisted or fought back more, somehow? Shouldn't he have said that he had dated only women and refused Draco and Severus when they figured out what he desired?

But that was part of the change he had wanted, the change he had admitted to Severus with a depth and thoroughness he didn't feel ready to show even Draco yet. He was tired of making decisions and then discovering afterwards that he'd done it for reasons that weren't the ones he knew, ones that weren't available on the surface.

This time, he was admitting that he might be wrong instead of being able to list all the neat reasons that would satisfy his friends. This time, he knew he would clash with Hermione and Ron and perhaps the rest of the Weasleys—except maybe Ginny, who often understood far more than the others credited her with. This time, he was saying "I don't know" and leaping ahead without understanding why.

It was a luxury he'd had only a few times in his life, and almost all of them were when he was younger.

He would at least try. He didn't think that he would destroy his life, or Draco's or Severus's, if it didn't work out the way he hoped it would. They were all stronger than that.

He thought.

He hoped.

"Done."

Harry blinked and looked up. Yes, he had reached the end of the row of flowers he was watering, and Draco had stepped back from whatever he was doing at the latest table with an expression of satisfaction. Harry cast the enchantment that would stop the water flowing from his wand and pressed his fists into his back, stretching and flexing as he worked the kinks out.

Draco stepped towards him, casually, but with a firmness to his movements that made Harry look at him. Draco smiled, winked, came closer still with the same unhurried stride that he would probably use to approach a friend he'd known for years, put his arms around Harry's neck and shoulders, and kissed him.

Harry opened his mouth without thought. This was a kiss that seemed to soothe the rawness his kiss with Severus had left. He slid his tongue into Draco's mouth, braver than he had been the last time they touched, exploring. Draco moaned, and Harry smiled. _He _had done that.

Draco pulled away at last, blinking as though the lights of the greenhouse were startlingly bright after the darkness behind his eyelids. Then he looked at Harry and whistled. "You needed that," he said.

"Yes," Harry murmured. He felt as though he had dropped from a great height and finally got over the shock of it. He put his arms around Draco and sighed. "Severus talked to me and kissed me," he said. "It was—more intimate than I expected. I told him these things that are true, but I was trying to avoid thinking about, because I don't like them very much."

"What kind of things?" Draco was trying to look wise. Harry thought it would be kinder to let him imagine that he'd succeeded.

"Things that made me Slytherin. He wanted to know what else about me was Slytherin, other than almost being Sorted into it."

Draco sighed. He placed one hand on Harry's back and began to work the fingers as if he was massaging, digging into Harry's skin and muscles. Harry let his head drop back and didn't try to disguise the pleasure in his movements or his moans.

"Severus is smarter than either of us," Draco said at last.

Harry hummed. He would agree to anything Draco wanted as long as he continued to stroke his back like that.

"But he doesn't realize how overwhelming his intensity is, sometimes," Draco said. "And he believes in one reality. Under the surface, past the lies that we tell ourselves, he really does think that there's a truth everyone can see and accept, if they'll be brave enough. That's _his _truth, of course."

Harry snorted, but he couldn't be angry when Draco was finding spots of tension that hadn't ever unwound for anyone else. "He did look smug about something."

"He thinks you're coming around to the one truth," Draco said. "And the way he kissed you was _his_ way of showing you he's happy about that." He lowered his hand.

Harry sighed and smiled. He hoped it was a wry smile, since that was what he was aiming for, though from the glance Draco gave him, it might not be. "Then I hope I'll get used to it," he said. "It's like living in the middle of a whirlwind."

Draco gave him a light kiss. "Luckily, you have me to ground you," he said. "Did you ever think I'd say that?"

"No," Harry said, and the confusion and too-true truth of the morning finally broke from him in a gale of laughter. "Never."

Draco smiled at him.

*

Draco turned around in the middle of the shop and studied Severus's display. Then he stepped through the arched doorway that now separated his section of the shop from Severus's—thanks to Harry's skills with a wand—and studied that part, too.

It was a neat, clean, trim place, with wooden walls that shone white thanks to several Household Cleaning Charms Harry had learned from Granger during her quest to take away house-elves. The entrance was of stone, and so was Harry's part of the shop, because that supported his heavy wards better. The front door led into Severus's section, partially because there were more displays there—crates, tables, barrels, flat trays, and cages for the few animals sold alive—and so a would-be thief or attacker would have less room to run or turn.

Draco's section had a single, golden cauldron on display on the central table, protected by some of Harry's wards so powerful that they created a shimmering haze in the air around it. The counter was towards the back of the shop, and the wall behind that was covered with holes that contained vials of brewed potions. Draco had a parchment list up behind it of prices for the most common potions as well as the prices for commissions. His section was the darkest, the coolest, the shadiest, the most open. People would be tempted to linger there and talk with him, which was exactly what they wanted. Draco knew his potions would be harder to sell compared to Severus's ingredients or Harry's wards; they already had established reputations.

Three steps took him under another arched doorway and down into Harry's section. The walls curved fantastically overhead, leading up to a ceiling that looked almost pointed at first, due to the tricks that Harry had forced the stones to perform. There were several different tables Harry had covered with precious objects protected with visible examples of his work, and photographs of warded houses on the walls. Draco smiled when he noticed a picture of Malfoy Manor there. He could only imagine what his father would say if Draco told him that.

Harry didn't have a counter, but a series of chairs standing in a half-circle, where he could sit and chat with his clients. He was sitting in one now, looking around and nodding critically to himself.

He caught Draco's eye and pointed at the far wall. "I already told Severus about this, but you should know, too," he said.

Draco looked over and blinked when he saw another door there. "Won't that mean people walk in here without coming past my displays and Severus's?" he asked, working hard to keep the disapproval out of his voice.

Harry shook his head and bounced his ankle off the leg of the chair. "This door only opens out. It will give us an extra entrance in case of an attack that we can't face off or a bad fire, but no one can even see it from the street."

Draco smiled at him. "Such cleverness needs a reward," he murmured, edging forwards. He loved to watch Harry's lips part, his pupils dilate, and the brilliant flush spread along his throat.

"Not now," Severus's voice said from the doorway behind him. Draco jumped, and then cleared his throat and tried to pretend that he was simply interested in the nearest example of the wards. Harry chuckled. "We have our first clients," Severus said.

There was something peculiar in his voice. Draco turned his head, and saw the way a muscle in Severus's cheek twitched, the way his robes rippled. That _might _have indicated that the spine beneath them was as straight as a poker.

"Severus?" Harry asked uncertainly, standing up, probably in response to the same faint signals Draco was getting from him.

"You know them," was all Severus had time to say before voices split the cool, untainted air of the shop.

"Harry!"

Granger and Weasley trotted out from behind Severus and down the steps, ignoring him as if he wasn't there. Their eyes were only for Harry. Granger was already holding out one hand, and Weasley looked uneasily at the stone walls as if he assumed they were trapped and would fall in on his best mate's head. Draco snorted. _You'd think he'd be experienced enough with Harry's work by now to recognize it._

"I didn't know that you actually intended to go through with this," Granger said, eyes bright with concern, "this—going into business. Why?"

Weasley's eyes snapped down. "He can if he wants to, Hermione," he said, in a tone that had the sound of a long-running argument. "But it isn't like you not to tell us, mate," he added. "We thought this was only a temporary thing."

Harry drew himself up to face them more bravely than Draco had thought he would. These, after all, were not people whom Harry wanted to alienate, or was indifferent to alienating, such as Draco's parents were. And it would be easy to make them think Harry had betrayed them, as sensitive as they still probably were to Slytherins even years after Hogwarts. Draco wrapped his hands together behind his back, so they wouldn't see the most obvious sign of his nervousness, and didn't look at Severus. He knew that Severus would do a far better job of hiding his emotions than Draco could.

"I want to work with them," Harry said quietly. His throat jumped, but his eyes didn't blink or dart. He didn't look embarrassed, only a bit sad and concerned. "I let you think it was temporary because I wasn't up to an argument with you right then. And you said a lot that convinced you of what you wanted to be the truth." He looked steadily at Weasley, who flushed and ducked his head.

"But—" Granger sounded like a lost child. "I mean, why?" She turned to glance at Draco and Severus. "I know they've changed since the war," she said, though Draco was sure that was only a courtesy rather than a deeply-held belief. "But your business is successful on your own, Harry. And you know we've never got along."

"_We're _getting along now," Harry said. "More than getting along, in fact, or we wouldn't have opened a business together." His eyes went to Draco and Severus's faces, and in them was a question. Draco knew what the question would be even before he thought deeply about what Harry's eyes held, and he nodded immediately.

Severus took long enough that Draco glared at him, because he didn't want to catch Harry between the rock of his friends and the hard place of Severus's desire for privacy. Then Severus gave a nod like the flick of a whip and glanced away.

"We're dating," Harry said. He immediately smiled, almost in spite of himself. Draco was glad that Severus had turned back in time to see the smile. He started, transfixed, and Draco gave his own grin, certain that if anything could reconcile Severus to this invasion of his space, Harry's smile would.

"Which one?" Weasley turned his head, blinking at Draco and at Severus, as if he found them both odd choices for different reasons. Draco tried not to scowl. If someone had proposed this to him so much as a month ago, he would have felt the same incredulity.

"Both," Harry said. He cleared his throat, but his smile remained. Draco thought it was the lack of right words that baffled him more than anything else. "I mean, all three of us are dating the other three. The other two. We're—I'm dating Draco and Severus, and they're dating each other, and they're dating me. At the same time."

Draco moved a step forwards in the silence that followed, instinctively wanting to protect Harry, and Severus moved with him.

"Well," Weasley said, in a calmer voice than Draco would have expected out of him, "I never thought that would happen." He turned around and looked at Draco and Severus together, and Draco didn't think he wanted to know what thoughts were traveling behind the git's eyes. He was probably conjuring up images that he had no right to conjure up. "As long as you want to be with them," Weasley added, "I don't think it does any harm."

Draco rolled his eyes. "Thank you for that ringing note of approval, Weasley," he said. He knew it should be thankful that it wasn't a denunciation and Harry wasn't going to have to fight as hard a battle as Draco had assumed he would, but he had to say _something _like that. Otherwise, it would look too much like getting along.

Severus shifted his weight, but it was Weasley who replied. "Be grateful that's all," he said. "Hermione?"

Only then did Draco realize Granger was rocking back and forth in place, looking overwhelmed. She glanced from Harry to Draco, from Harry to Severus, and back again, shaking her head several times. Then she said, "But how did it _happen_? I mean, Harry, you were dating women—"

"Not very often, not for very long, and not very well," Harry said. His best friend's support, or maybe the interlude between the times he'd had to speak, had given him what sounded like strength. He was smiling now, his arms folded, and he had moved a step closer to Weasley. "Maybe this is why. Really, Hermione, I don't care. I'm doing what will make me happy."

"Why didn't you tell us right away?" Granger reached out and took Harry's hand. "Were you that afraid of our reactions?"

"Yes, with who I'm dating," Harry said.

Granger looked at the floor and gave a breathless little, "Oh." Then she flung her arms around Harry and squeezed hard enough to make him give a pained gasp. Draco tossed Weasley a stern glance, but the idiot was grinning. He seemed to think it was just fine if his wife choked Harry to death.

"I'm sorry," Granger said, her voice muffled by Harry's shoulder. "I didn't consider what I was doing when I treated it as weird that you wanted to go into business with them. I'm sorry."

"No harm done." Harry patted her shoulder briskly and held her away from him, smiling. "Now, I think I heard the front door open, which means we've got customers here, so why don't you and Ron go home? I'll come and have dinner with you tonight."

Draco held his tongue; Harry was supposed to have dinner with _them _tonight. But he thought it would be the wrong time to press about that.

"Of course." Granger wiped her eyes once, though Draco hadn't seen her shed a tear, and nodded to Weasley. "We'll see you later."

Weasley punched Harry on the shoulder and said something Draco couldn't hear—not for want of trying—then followed his wife. They were left alone in a silence that Harry seemed half-defiant about, ready to protect. His eyes darted from Severus to Draco, and he stood up taller, straighter, the line of his neck rigid.

"I expected a much worse confrontation than that," Draco said at last, because it was stupid of them to just to keep standing there, even though Harry's line about the front door opening had been a transparent means to evict his friends.

"Indeed," Severus drawled, sounding relieved that someone had said something first. "I had expected threats to dismember us if we hurt you, at the very least."

"Oh, they're Gryffindors," Harry said, who had flushed but was smiling at them. "The threats were practically implied."

And that seemed, as much as it surprised Draco, to be that.


	9. Chapter 9

"I want sapphires. Two of them, of the finest water. See to it that you don't try to fob me off with anything inferior."

Severus nodded to the woman, Halcyon Grimethorpe, who had given him the order, and then turned to select two sapphires from the box behind him. He kept his most valuable ingredients behind the counter; Harry's wards were superior, but there was no point in exposing the weak-minded to temptation.

When he placed the blue stones on the counter, Grimethorpe began to wave her wand, casting several spells that would tell her the truth about her purity. Because he knew she would find no negative facts unless it pleased her to make them up, Severus let his gaze wander the rest of the shop while he waited for her conclusions.

Two young warlocks browsed through his jar of bats' wings, arguing with each other in softly heated voices about what consistency and size of wing would be the best for certain Dark potions. Severus had already carefully marked their faces in case he had Aurors to answer to later. A witch who had often visited the shop before used a scoop on the beetles' eyes, and then took three by hand. Janus, a wizard who had no last name as far as Severus knew, examined a piece of glass with a slight blue tint and nodded approval.

Glancing to the left, he could see the customers in Draco's section, negotiating for potions, vials, corks, and cauldrons. Draco was saying things to make them laugh, whoever they were. Already Severus had seen a few depart with relaxed expressions who had come in with grim faces, determined to disapprove of two Death Eaters.

He could not see Harry's end of the shop from here, but the queue for it passed up the steps and into Draco's section. Draco showed no resentment of that. Severus had no doubt they would have to deal with it later, however. Harry's voice only occasionally rose loudly enough for him to hear it. He seemed to prefer individual, intense, low-voiced negotiations with his clients.

And yet, Severus thought, separated or not, there was a current of energy that—

"I will take these, young man," Grimethorpe said with stately confidence. She was nearly the age Dumbledore had been, and allowed her eccentric form of address. Severus nodded and picked up the sapphires so that he might weigh them. He knew what the price was already, but Grimethorpe was someone to like it best when she saw the bargain transacted in front of her.

There was a current of energy that linked them, Severus thought, as the scales clinked and bobbed and nodded into place, telling him one sapphire was worth six hundred Galleons, the second five hundred eighty. He would have known in a moment if someone had gone into Harry's shop and threatened him. Draco's gestures and lazy comments gave Severus strength. And Draco and Harry regularly exchanged smiles that echoed into Severus's part of the shop like distant bugles.

"That much?" complained Grimethorpe. "Jewel prices grow worse every year." Nonetheless, she had already taken out her purse.

Severus smiled absently, and tilted his head. Harry had done something, which rippled through Draco's shop and into his. He knew he had no basis for such feelings, and he would never have confessed them—not even to Draco and Harry, until he knew them better—but they were there, and he felt part of something for the first time since—

He caught his breath. _Since the Death Eaters._

"You ought to get that cough looked at, young man," Grimethorpe told him, and picked up her purse and the small netted bag into which he had put the sapphires, bustling out the door.

Severus leaned on the counter and looked around the shop, making sure that none of the customers needed his help at the moment. Then he shut his eyes and shook his head. What he had felt, or what he had imagined he felt, did not truly exist. How could any sort of "current" link them when they had been living together for only a few days and declaring their intention to date for scarcely longer than that?

But it seemed to. He could tell when Draco laughed at something his clients said and that he thought genuinely funny, and he could tell when Draco gave a strained chuckle that was only meant to guarantee a sale. He could feel the pressure of the air on his skin at the moment when Harry must have thought it too hot, because the noise of a window creaking open came from his section of the shop.

_Perhaps it is nothing mystical, _Severus thought, a welcome relief to his mind, because he had always been uncomfortable with mystical explanations for strange things. There would be magical theory somewhere that made them rational, and "mysterious" potions usually depended on a fortuitous combination of circumstances, not something truly unexpected or intruding from "another dimension," a favorite phrase of some ancient writers. _I am imagining their perspectives, and that gives me the ability to also feel what they might be feeling at the moment. It is not infallible. I should not depend on it._

But even that made him pause in wonder and doubt, because he did not consider himself particularly empathic or prone to adopting others' perspectives.

_What have they done to me?_

Considering how smoothly he and Draco were able to react a moment later, it could be nothing evil—not when it allowed them to help protect Harry.

Raised voices sounded from Harry's shop, and then the noise of glass breaking. It could have been a dropped potions vial. It could have come from the door of Draco's shop as easily as Harry's. Severus could picture someone who was leaning into Harry's shop to examine his wards letting their grasp slip on a purchase as they stared in wonder.

It _could _have been those things. But he was already moving from behind his counter—casting spells to lock the lids of barrels and crates—when his clients were still turning to look in mild curiosity, and he could see Draco moving at the same rate, a blur of gold and silver.

Severus crossed Draco's shop easily and leaped down the three stairs into Harry's section. Then he reached behind him and dragged Draco down into a crouch as a brilliant red spell cut the air above their heads. It vanished into the crackle of wards around one of Harry's displays, but Severus doubted that it would have vanished so neatly if they had actually got in its way.

Harry was standing with his back to the wall nearest the hidden door, his hand steady as he cast curse after curse at the attacking witch. She'd had a large hood tucked over her head, but it flew free now, and Severus could see blonde hair nearly the color of Draco's. He tensed and craned his neck, but no, this was not Narcissa Malfoy. Among other things, Narcissa would never have had such poor control of her spells that they almost escaped her control, and she would never have tried to get past the ward that Harry had had time to raise in front of him.

The ward, though, was unsupported by the wood and stone that Harry usually liked to hang it on, and thus prone to crumble faster. And the witch had already broken one of the protected windows through luck or sheer power. Severus caught Draco's eye and nodded to the left, then tapped his chest and nodded to the right.

Draco nodded back, his eyes nearly black with fury. Severus felt a deeper, colder version as he stood and began to flank the witch. How _dare _someone attack their partner in their shop? They would not call in the Aurors. There were other ways to make her pay—more reliable ones, considering that some of the Aurors still had grudges against anyone with a Dark Mark on his arm or a certain last name.

"_Incarcerous! Flamma!_" Draco shouted.

Severus cast his spell nonverbally. In case the witch had any attention to spare from her fight with Harry, he did not want her to know what it had been.

Ropes curled around the witch from behind, jerking her arms taut to her sides. She gave a yowl of astonishment and dropped her wand. Then Draco's flame appeared next to her face, and she held very still. Severus could smell singed hair. He would have scolded Draco for his lack of control, but he had no doubt that that was what Draco had intended to happen.

Severus's spell was invisible, but it settled into her stomach and wound itself about her guts. Wherever she spent the night, she would spend it with anything she ate coming out at both ends. And she would have an urge to eat largely until nightfall, when the spell would take effect, for the sake of extra punishment.

The witch's eyes darted back and forth as both Draco and Severus approached her. Harry stood up straight, Vanished the ward that had guarded him, and nodded to them. He was panting, but his eyes were bright. "It's been a long time since I was in Auror training," he said. "I forgot how good it could feel to fight."

Draco opened his mouth to say something angry and worried and wrong, but Severus caught his eye and shook his head. It would not do to scold Harry for something someone else had done. Draco bowed his head in acknowledgment and stepped aside, which let Severus be the first to confront the woman, putting his body between her and Harry. In the meantime, Severus cast a nonverbal spell that would encourage any clients still remaining to leave by making them feel discomfort, and Draco threw locking and silencing charms at the door into Harry's section.

"What did you imagine you were doing?" Severus asked, genuinely interested. He would not have expected many of those who hated Harry for dating Death Eaters to attack _Harry_. They would try argument first—reasonable argument, by their lights—and to eliminate him and Draco. The best way to make sure Harry did not date Death Eaters was to get rid of the Death Eaters. Accordingly, the personal wards had been heavier in Draco and Severus's sections of the shop.

_A mistake we will not make again, _Severus thought, as he whispered, "_Legilimens_," and slid into the woman's mind.

He discovered immediately that no satisfying conspiracy had sent her. She had simply decided, with a revulsion against the loss of her hero Harry Potter that went bone-deep, to not live in a world without someone so "wonderful." She would punish him, and even if she went to Azkaban, she would comfort herself by remembering what he had been, instead of what he had become when he started corrupting himself.

Severus rolled his eyes and broke free of the contact. The woman was a typical example of the melodramatic species, those who never grew beyond their Hogwarts days and continued to see the world in the grand lights and shadows that a Gryffindor mindset, in particular, tended to induce. She would have felt sorry if she had succeeded in hurting Harry, of course, and there was no way she could have endured Azkaban, but she _felt _as if she could. No amount of logic would argue her out of that.

"It is not worth bothering with her justifications," he told Harry and Draco. "What do you want to do?"

"Hurt her," Draco said immediately. He was standing beside Harry with one hand on his waist. Severus ignored the flare of his jealousy, as predictable by this point as sunrise. "She tried to hurt one of us." His eyes were dark, and for a moment Severus saw Lucius in his face as Draco's father had been in his days of serious service to the Dark Lord.

"Harry?" Severus asked quietly, shifting his gaze to his other partner.

Harry shook his head. "What she did was stupid and wrong," he said, holding the woman's gaze in a way that made Severus wonder whether he suspected that hearing such words from her hero would be the most severe punishment possible for her. "But she should be given to the Aurors on charges of attempting to harm someone else, rather than actually harming them."

"You _can't _expect us to regard it that way!" Draco burst out, with a suddenness that startled Severus despite his foreknowledge of Draco's feelings. "If she'd just hurt someone random in the street, I'd agree, but it was you—"

Harry stepped up beside Draco and rubbed his arm. Draco shut his mouth and stared at him, then glanced down at the hand as if he didn't know why the touch should soothe him so much, but was glad that it did.

Severus was glad, as well. It gave him the chance to speak and sound rational and wise in his own right, not simply an echo of Harry. "Harry is correct," he said. "Too great a response to this intrusion would only confirm the effectiveness of it in the minds of others, and we would be troubled by more than if we simply ignored it. Relatively speaking," he added, thinking of how seriously the Aurors might take it.

"We'll _never _stop," the woman burst out. "Me, or others like me. You've betrayed us all by taking up with this—this _scum. _Acting as if you're friends." She looked at Harry with fireworks of resentment bursting in her eyes. "There's no reason that you have to go to them," she whispered. "Did we mistreat you? Did we not give you the attention you craved? You haven't been as involved in politics or the wizarding world in the last few years, that's true, but there are still plenty of us who honor you."

"I always wanted to be left alone," Harry said. "But really, did you think attacking me was the way to get me to change my mind?"

The woman stared at him in hostile bewilderment. Harry opened his mouth as if he would continue to argue, but Severus caught his eye and shook his head. Harry seemed to understand, as he simply shrugged and turned his back.

"Do we have to only do that?" Draco muttered, but from the sound of it, he was giving in.

"Let me take her," Harry said, speaking to Severus more than Draco, though he gave Draco a keen, sympathetic glance. "The Aurors know me, and they'll be more likely to listen to my side of the story first."

"They won't," the woman said with vicious satisfaction, lowering her eyes and giving the floor a little smile, as if it and she were conspirators. "Once they learn where I was and what I was doing, they'll reward me for a public service."

"I think you have a lot to learn about the way the Aurors work," Harry said cheerfully, and, taking her arm, steered her towards the door.

Draco at least waited until Harry and the woman were gone before bursting out, though the door had hardly closed. "Why did he react like that?" he demanded of Severus. "Why is he so casual about his life being threatened? Do you think all the years with someone after him affected his mind?" He paused, as though he had been distracted by a new possibility. "Could he have a death wish?" he said, lowering his voice.

Severus controlled the laughter he would have liked to give voice to; Harry could rise up under ridicule, but Draco needed support at the moment. "I have no doubt that it did affect him," he said. "But he does not have a death wish. He simply measures these new threats to his life against what happened in the past, and esteems them less for that reason."

"We should still have stronger defenses on the shop." Draco's face was pale.

Severus let him describe what he would like, while he cast discreet spells on Harry's section of the shop that would alert him to the presence of much adrenaline in the veins of someone who entered it. Whether that was Harry himself reacting to a threat or the person bringing it in, Severus thought it best to have warning.

He had no doubt there would be false alarms, but Harry had told him the truth, had said that he would offer Severus his fame, and had prized Severus's rare kindness for as much as it should be worth. Severus would put up with any number of false alarms to keep someone who did that.

*

Harry sighed as he Apparated onto the doorstep of their house, and spent a moment leaning against the door.

The Aurors had believed him, especially with the woman—Rebekah Estep—loudly proclaiming what she had done to anyone who would listen, but they had questioned him sternly for several hours anyway, as if setting up shop with people who had been suspected of crimes in the past was a criminal act in itself. Harry understood the reasons for their caution; he even appreciated them, since that caution had saved his life several times in the days after the war. But he had answered the same set of questions three times for three different people, and all the while his mind was on Draco and Severus.

_They probably suffered more than I did, _he thought as he laid his palm atop the ward that would identify him and permit him passage through the rest of the wards. _It happened so quickly all I had to do was react. But they were worried for me. And I know that Draco thought I dismissed it too easily._

He walked into the kitchen, where he thought they would probably be at this time of the night, determined to make things up to them.

Then he stopped.

There were three candles burning in the center of the table, arranged in a triangle that Harry would have had to be stupid not to recognize the significance of. The table itself was draped with a dark cloth that had a border of red, a beautiful thing Harry had never seen before. The chairs bore cushions that were either conjured by an expert or stolen from Malfoy Manor.

Severus stood behind the nearest chair, Draco behind the one next to that, and both of them had their eyes fixed on him.

"Hullo," Harry said, and resisted the temptation to scratch his head. It would probably make particles of dandruff fall out of his hair, and that would send _entirely _the wrong impression in an atmosphere like this. "Is—are you all right? Did I miss something?" He was searching back through the weeks in his mind, trying to remember if this was the anniversary of anything, or a Slytherin holiday.

"We thought that we'd take that dinner date we wanted to have in the first place," Severus said, his soft tones washing away Harry's awkwardness at once, "but which we were distracted from by the exertion of moving in together."

"And we're making it a _date_," Draco said. He moved behind Harry with light steps and laid his hands on the cloak, which Harry had worn into the kitchen in his absentmindedness. "May I take your cloak?"

Harry hesitated for one moment. This seemed so…odd, so unlike them. Was he supposed to play along? Was it a joke?

But all he could see in Severus's eyes was intensity, and he doubted they would have played a joke on him so soon after a threat on his life. Maybe this was what _they _thought _he _wanted: a touch of romance and close attention.

_Well, isn't this pleasant, _Harry thought, with a smile on his lips that couldn't help being sincere as he extended his arms and let Draco take the cloak.

"Sit here," Severus said, and pulled out the chair that was opposite his.

_He can't help making it a command, _Harry noted as he walked across the room, with Draco walking at his side, and sat in the chair. That didn't matter, though, when Draco's warm hand was brushing against his arm with a regular, soft touch, and when Severus's eyes were resting on him with their own piercing warmth.

Severus pushed the chair in until Harry's stomach almost touched the table. Harry tried to suppress a wriggle of discomfort, but of course Severus noticed, and moved the chair back again. Harry nodded when he was at the perfect distance. Severus stepped away and towards his own seat, but didn't sit down, instead drinking in Harry with his eyes.

"I—this is nice," Harry said, ducking his head and wishing that his fiery cheeks didn't give him away, "but I'm not used to this level of attention. Could you look elsewhere? Or let me pay attention to you, too?"

"I don't mind that," Draco said, with a smile that melted across his face like sugar exposed to flame.

But Severus shook his head slightly, letting his hair swish in several directions at once, and reached out with one hand as if he would caress Harry's shoulder, though they were nowhere near touching distance. "We could have lost you today," he said. "Permit me to gaze at you as if you were a rare specimen under glass. Today has reminded me how rare you are."

Harry flushed more—although up until now he wouldn't have said that was possible—and lowered his eyes. He couldn't deny the pleasure he felt in Severus's attention, which had been so much less protective when he was in school. And it was coming to him, slowly, that this might be one way he could indulge his lovers, sometimes, when he couldn't think of more active gifts or they didn't want them from him.

_If they want this, why not let them have it? _he thought, but he did reach over and clasp Draco's hand, because he thought Draco had spoken sincerely when he said that he would like to be waited on.

Severus moved his wand in a long motion over the table that echoed the swishing of his hair. Harry blinked when the plates shimmered and suddenly bore food: pale lemons and oranges, heavy pies that steamed from the edges, green confections that looked more tempting than most of the salads Harry had seen, and bowls of soft, clear liquids that might have been soups but smelled much better.

"Is this conjured food?" he had to ask. "Because I've eaten enough of that in the past to last me a lifetime."

"No," Severus said. "Nor have we suddenly acquired a house-elf, though not through lack of effort on Draco's part." Draco flushed, and Harry squeezed his hand again, wondering if Draco had ventured back to Malfoy Manor, and what had happened if he had. "Draco and I bought the food this afternoon," Severus continued, "and I have prepared it. What I cast just now was nothing more than a complicated summoning spell."

Harry rolled his eyes over the patronizing tone in Severus's voice, but reached for an orange and used his fingernail to cut into the skin. Draco took up a lemon and did the same thing. Harry sighed when he finally managed to separate the orange into chunks and taste the juice that leaped away from his mouth as if eager to escape being swallowed. "This is marvelous," he said. "It's like I can actually taste the sunshine it grew in."

Severus stared at him for a moment, then inclined his head and sat. "Never let it be said that Harry Potter cannot be poetic when he tries," he murmured.

Draco was struggling with his lemon, so Harry reached over and helped him instead of trying to respond. There were still old resentments, angers, injuries, between them that might flare to life if pressed on.

But the tenor of the meal wasn't like that. It was full of good food, muffled conversation that was allowed to trail away and die naturally, and sweetness. Draco brushed his hand across Harry's at every chance he got. Severus made acerbic comments about wards, and at times stared at Harry in a way that suggested he was trying to memorize how Harry looked, how he spoke and moved and smiled.

When Harry was in the middle of his second bowl of salad—or dressed-up lettuce and chopped carrots, cheese, and eggs, because it still tasted better than any salad should—the incidental touches of Draco's hand became heavier. Severus leaned towards him with a more decided intent, and he didn't speak as often. His nostrils flared, however, and Harry thought he was breathing in what he could of Harry's scent.

_What he can smell of that with the candles and the food, _Harry thought, but his chest was tight, and he found it harder and harder to hold Severus's eyes.

Draco finished his last lemon and got up, standing behind Harry. His hands landed on the back of the chair, but Harry could feel his fingertips, and knew what he wanted. He let his head fall back so that he could look up into Draco's eyes.

Draco moaned, even though no one was touching him and Harry thought his gaze comparatively innocent. He reached out and trailed his fingers down Harry's cheek, and murmured, "You're incredible."

"Don't say that when I haven't even done anything yet," Harry murmured back, and trailed _his_ fingers down Draco's neck and onto his collarbone. Then he twisted around so he could follow the path with his mouth.

Draco's head promptly lolled to the side, and his hand was still. Harry smiled. He understood that Severus might want to spoil him thanks to his encounter with Estep, but Draco had always liked being pampered better, and Harry thought he himself was probably more comfortable in the active role.

Then a mouth fastened on the back of his neck, and Harry started. _There's someone else here who might like to take that role, _he thought, as he arched forwards to give Severus more room to work with. _I keep forgetting that._

But before his self-blame could go too far, he reminded himself that he had never been with two people at once before, and relaxed with a sigh. He turned his head to share a kiss with Severus, then turned back to Draco and tugged his shirt away from his chest. Draco shook his head.

Harry hesitated.

"That was an admission that I don't know if I can bear this, not an admonition to stop," Draco growled, and Harry grinned and reached out to tug on his nipples. They stood out from Draco's chest, already harder than the warm air could account for, and Harry murmured appreciation and bent to taste them.

They didn't taste like anything but skin. They didn't _need _to taste like anything but that. Harry laughed in delight, half-dazed and not caring. He could feel Severus's fingers and tongue moving slowly over his back—where had his shirt gone? asked the part of his mind in charge of irrelevant questions—and that, combined with the sensation in his mouth, made him feel dizzy and elated.

There was a smack and a sharp curse, and Severus said, "The chair is in the way, gentlemen. May I suggest moving this to the couch?"

They stumbled out of the dining room, Draco trying to touch Harry and walk at the same time, and Harry arching forwards and back to feel both of his lovers at once, and Severus murmuring imprecation against the chair as he buried his fingers in Harry's hair and tugged. They were halfway to the drawing room before it occurred to Harry that Severus hadn't said which couch he meant.

But apparently this one was close enough, and Severus turned so that he was dragging Harry practically into his lap and stealing his breath with a kiss. Then he turned his head slightly to the side and kissed Draco, who whimpered.

Harry felt as if he was falling off a cliff, and he didn't protest or even help when Severus began to wrestle him free of his clothes. For one thing, he was too busy trying to get Draco naked while Draco squirmed and kicked and protested that Harry's fingers along his ribs were tickling him.

Everything seemed to pause at once, then, when they were finally all three naked, or as close to it as they could come without tumbling off the couch (Harry thought he could feel one sock still clinging to his foot, and there was the rubbing of cloth _somewhere _south of his arse, although he didn't know who was wearing it). Harry was lying on his back, shoulders in Severus's lap and his glasses gone. Draco was crouched precariously above him on hands and knees, weaving back and forth in a way that made Harry afraid he was going to fall at any moment.

"Is this—can we do this?" Draco whispered. Harry wondered if he was asking only one of them, or both.

When he tilted his head back, he could see Severus's expression, but that didn't do much good when it was so blurry.

"I say we can," Severus said, voice decisive, and reached down and grasped Harry's erection.

Harry gave an undignified little wail that he hated the thought of, jabbing his hips up. Draco wavered and _did _fall, this time, but he collapsed onto Harry instead of the floor. And then he laughed and kissed Harry, and Harry reached down and took firm hold of Draco's balls and _tugged._

Draco panted and half-rolled over, reaching for Severus's chest. Harry grinned. He could only have touched Severus by reaching awkwardly down and back, so, despite his own eagerness to do it, he was glad that Draco was going first.

Severus's fingers tightened around Harry, and he said something in what sounded remarkably like Parseltongue.

Harry's amusement fled. He rubbed Draco, who squeaked and pressed down harder, crushing Severus's hand into place, rubbing his cock against Harry's. Hands moved and blurred. Severus arched under Harry, and Harry thought he felt a damp and leaking tip touch his back, which excited him so much that he convulsed and nearly came.

Heat and weight from above as Draco pressed down; heat and weight from under as Severus pressed up. Harry was trapped, caught, between them, and if he had ever pictured this, he might have thought it would be terrifying, or at least suffocating.

It was _brilliant. _To know _he _was the one making them cry out like that, to embrace Draco and feel the rutting and the stabbing from behind, to skim Severus's chest with a hasty hand when he could and hear his soft pleased grunts, was a measure of freedom and _power _that he was sure both Ron and Hermione would think he was insane if he told them about.

Not that he ever intended to tell them about this, but, well, it was the _principle _of the thing.

And why in the world was he thinking about Ron and Hermione when Draco was biting his chin—well, trying to bite his chin, but mostly getting his hair—and Severus was bumping up against him and there were damp bursts against Harry's back that indicated he was _coming_?

Harry rutted against the fingers that gripped him, against the slick and sweaty skin of Draco's hips, and came with a breath that seemed to turn to fire inside him and rush out of him via his cock. He was getting both Draco and Severus all wet and sticky, but that only increased his satisfaction, the sense of power that roared in his chest. What _couldn't _he do, when he felt like this?

Draco squinched up his face as if in pain and came with a laboring groan, holding himself still as he ground into Harry's hips and Severus's hand. Then he shut his eyes and lay still, puffs of warm breath escaping his mouth onto Harry's cheek.

Harry turned his head and kissed him.

Severus joined the kiss in the next instant, by the simple expedient of prying up Harry's head and substituting his mouth for Draco's. Harry made sure to take hold of Severus's chin, now that he could reach it, and give as much passion into this meeting of lips and darting of tongues as he had to Draco. Of all of them, he thought Severus was the one most likely to get jealous and feel left-out.

"Well, there's at least one way in which this wasn't a mistake," Harry said, when he could pull his lips away and exercise some command over his tongue again. "The sex is _brilliant._"

He got two dirty looks: one from Draco, who seemed to believe that it was Harry's part, as the Gryffindor, to say something more romantic after their first time together, and from Severus, who was shaking his hand as if he never expected to regain feeling in it.

Harry shut his eyes. He was smiling, and he was absurdly confident about the future in a way that said future definitely didn't warrant. He couldn't stop himself from being so. That was just the way it was.


	10. Chapter 10

Draco blinked in surprise as an owl fluttered in through the window and landed on the table in front of him. Both Harry and Severus were still in the house—it was Saturday, and although their shop had only been open for a few days, they felt justified in closing it today and giving themselves time to speak and softly touch, after last night—and he truly didn't expect his parents to write to him so soon after his father's ultimatum. He reached for the letter that the owl bore with some trepidation.

The paper was unfamiliar, if elegant, but the scent of lilacs that clung around it made him lift the letter to his nose automatically.

_Pansy._

Draco's hands were shaking when he opened the envelope, and he didn't think anyone could have blamed him—at least, not anyone who didn't know his tumultuous history with Pansy, who had sometimes been his girlfriend, sometimes his enemy, sometimes his lover. It occurred to Draco, for the first time, that she had taken on Harry's role in his life after Hogwarts, when he no longer saw Harry every day and had no reason to seek him out.

_Dear Draco;_

_I'm sure you'll think this is an inopportune letter, coming by the time that you've probably already put me out of your mind._

Draco snored, aware that the sound wavered, and touched his hair. As if Pansy would ever believe he had that power.

_But I've come to realize that you were right. My marriage with Henri seemed like a dream on the surface, but I've woken now, and I'm bored. He'll always treat me with either genuine affection or courtly indifference, but nothing else. I need something more. Arguments. Insults. A cleverness I can measure myself against, and someone who always feels something for me, even that if something isn't publicly admissible._

_I've put the proceedings in motion to divorce Henri, and I'm coming back to England. Say that you'll be there, waiting for me._

_Pansy._

Draco sat still for so long that Harry, who'd been sitting with Severus in the library, came back into the kitchen for another cup of tea. He glanced casually at Draco as he came in, saying, "Are you _still _at breakfast? We'll have to make sure that you don't eat the customers in the shop—"

He must have seen something in Draco's face that warned him this was no time for joking, because he cursed softly and sat down beside Draco, staring into his face. "Draco? What's wrong?"

Draco reached out a hand. Harry took it without hesitation.

"I got a letter today," Draco said. He thought about unfolding the letter and permitting Harry to read it, but they weren't quite at that stage yet. He licked his lips and went on. "It was from Pansy. She was—my last lover before I was with you. I left her because she wouldn't leave her husband, even after I begged her."

Harry was silent, but the silence was so intense and _listening _that Draco turned towards him without further thought and buried his nose in Harry's shoulder. Harry started, and then lifted his hand and stroked the back of Draco's neck.

"Go on," Harry murmured, though from the tone of his voice he already knew the end of the story.

"She said that she's leaving her husband," Draco whispered. "Divorcing him. That's the thing I _dreamed _of, for years, Harry. I knew her in school. She was the first lover I ever had. She knows me better than anyone else."

"Does she."

The words were not a question, and they came, heavy with sourness, from the door of the kitchen. Draco shivered and lifted his head. Severus stood there, one hand holding a book in which a slender finger was laid. He studied the way that Draco and Harry sat at the table with an unblinking expression, but Draco had known him too long to miss the pallor of his face or the way that his hand shook lightly with anger before he saw Draco looking and suppressed it.

"It's—it's not like you think," Draco murmured.

"I heard what you said," Severus said, moving further into the room and shutting the door behind him, as though someone was going to intrude from that direction. The pallor in his face didn't go away, but he did take his finger out of the book and lay it down on the table with a snap. Harry caught his breath then, as if he realized Severus's anger for the first time, but he didn't move away from Draco or stop his slow stroking. "That Miss Parkinson knew you better than anyone else. How could that be 'not like I think?'"

Draco thought about correcting him as far as Pansy's last name went, and then stopped, because he wasn't that suicidal. He bowed his head and stared at the tabletop. His mouth was dry, and he thought belatedly that it wasn't _fair, _for him to be caught like this between his present lovers and the one he had always wanted.

"Why can't it be both?" Harry asked, with more bravery than Draco could have shown in front of an angry Severus.

Severus paused, and there was silence that ticked around them like the heart of a clock. Draco looked up, but he only looked at Harry.

"Why cannot what be both?" Severus's voice was deeper than it had been, which might be a good sign or might not.

"Draco might think that she really _is _the one who knows him better than anyone else," Harry said. His hand moved on the back of Draco's neck still, stroking him, soothing the skin. Draco held still, not wanting to burrow closer in case that aroused Severus's anger in turn, but shivering with the need to do so. "And you might think that you do, for understandable reasons. But maybe you know different things about him than she does."

"That would also suggest that she knows different things about him than _we_ do." Severus paced closer to the table, and Draco tensed. Severus could make him feel like a student again who didn't know more than the basics of potions. In this case, his emphasis of the word suggested that Harry should feel offended right along with him.

Harry missed or decided to ignore the implication. "So what? I don't mind that. It's only natural. Unless you have a Time-Turner hidden somewhere and you're going to go back and make it so that they were never lovers, I don't think there's much you can do about that."

He sounded…_amused_. Draco looked him in the eye, blinking slowly. He had thought that Harry's lack of sensitivity to Severus's moods was a bad thing, because it meant he would always be on the outside looking in when Draco and Severus shared a private anger, concern, or memory. He had not realized it would also mean, of course, that Harry was less afraid of those same moods, because he would not know exactly how deep Severus's anger ran.

A chair scraped out. Severus sat down at the table with them. Draco still didn't look at him, and wouldn't until he knew how this scene would play out.

"Forgive me."

Draco shook all over with astonishment, and this time, he really did need to look up, because it was inconceivable that Severus would have said those words on his own. Had Harry hypnotized him without Draco noticing? Fed him a potion somehow? Waved frantically at him and mouthed words so convincing that Severus had decided teasing Draco about this would be the opposite of productive?

But Severus studied Draco without the glazed eyes and flushed cheeks produced by the most common control potions, and he held his hand out with nothing in it, not even his wand. Bewildered, Draco reached out and touched his fingers. Severus clasped them and refused to let them go.

"The only danger," Harry said, rearranging himself so that he was holding Draco more comfortably, "is if you intend to go back to her."

Severus's brow furrowed, and his fingers twitched violently. Draco shuddered and shook his head, not even wanting to think about what would happen between him and them if he tried.

"If the only reason you are staying is that you are afraid of me," Severus said, biting off each word, "perhaps you should reconsider what you want from—this." The pause showed him searching for words other than "relationship," and doubtless not finding them.

"How can you expect him not to express fear, when you glare like that?" Harry's voice was brittle, and he tightened his arms around Draco while glaring at Severus. "You look as if you want to murder him because of something _she _did. It's not as though Draco was waiting and hoping for her to send him a letter."

"I hope not."

Draco sighed and managed to sit up. Harry didn't move away from him no matter what, and Draco had to admit he was as soothed by that as by Severus's jealousy and possessiveness, though in a different way. And they needed to hear this. Harry, as protective as he was, might start wondering whether Draco was likely to abandon them for Pansy if he didn't get _some _kind of reassurance.

"It's simple," Draco said. "There was a time I had a hope of marrying her. It would have satisfied me, and it would have satisfied my parents, and at the time, I still cared more about pleasing them than I do now. And she seemed persuaded to consider marrying me. But then she went and got engaged to this French bloke she'd met once." Bitterness still coated his tongue, but he looked at Harry and Severus, thought about what Pansy would say when Draco told her he had not one but _both _of them, and felt better. "She still wanted to be with me, of course. But she no longer talked about divorcing him, the way she used to. And then she said that she never wanted to see me again because she really wanted to focus on her marriage."

"In the meantime," Harry said, voice soft and warm, "she changed her mind _again_. And you took her seriously and changed your life." His hand came to rest on Draco's thigh, and he was gazing at Draco with a level of happy adoration that really was quite embarrassing.

Draco coughed and turned his head away. "Yes, well," he said. "I—"

"Now that you no longer have a hope of marrying her," Severus asked, "do you still want her? Are we to be reduced to no more than another note in your long love life?"

Draco lifted his head. _They don't want to lose me, _he reminded himself. _That's why all the questions. _"I don't want her compared to you," he said honestly. "If I was free, yes, I'd be waiting for her to come to me. And I can't say that I'll never remember and lust after her again. But what I experienced with you is so different that I would miss that for far longer."

Severus turned his head to one side as if he had to think about that, and then gave a short nod. Harry leaned towards him and kissed his cheek.

"I'm glad," he whispered.

Those words, combined with the hungry look Severus gave him a short moment later, were what Draco needed to get past the impossible fantasy of living with Pansy again. He began to smile as he thought about the response he was going to write to her. He only wished he could be in the room when she opened the letter.

_She never thought I would have moved on and changed my life while she was gone. I was always supposed to be the passive one, sitting on the shore of life while she sailed the sea, pathetically grateful for whatever scraps of attention she deigned to give me._

He was already searching in his mind for suitable words, and he forgot his distress for the rest of that day. If it returned, in a muffled form, at night, it was only because they still slept apart in their own beds.

And _that _would change soon enough, so that Draco need feel no distress over it.

*

"Severus. I must speak to you."

He could not say that he had expected Lucius Malfoy to walk through the door of their shop, but he was not caught as unprepared as the man had doubtless hoped to find him. Severus laid down the latest cats-eye he had been looking for a place for on the shelf where the others already lay on velvet, enacted a ward that would keep them from being disturbed, and inclined his head. "Lucius. Would you care for a cup of tea?"

Lucius's body stiffened for a moment, as if he had imagined a different kind of treatment, or at least more surprise on Severus's part. Then he was nodding and moving past the moment as if it had never existed. "Of course. Shall we go upstairs?" He drew on a pair of gloves, soft and made of white, tanned dragonskin, before reaching out as if to touch the banister.

"Oh, we shall not," Severus said, stepping around the counter to fetch out his teapot. He had conducted more than one deal over a steaming cuppa; some of his customers preferred the informal approach. "I have everything we need right here." He waved his wand, and the door sealed itself. Another wave, and an unused shelf became a cushioned chair of the sort that he knew Lucius favored.

"That is convenient," Lucius said in a soft, deadly voice as he took his seat and patiently waited for the tea to boil.

"Yes, it often has been," Severus agreed, and leaned back against the wall behind the counter, determined to appear at ease.

There were footsteps from beyond the arched doorway, and Draco's head poked in. "Severus? I thought I heard…" His voice trailed away as he stared at his father.

"How pleasant to see you, Draco." Lucius's lips were partially shriveled with dislike and disgust as he glanced at his son from the corner of his eye. "There should be nothing preventing you from coming in and joining the conversation."

Draco looked at Severus, swallowed, and said, "I should get Harry. I don't think he's with a client at the moment." He beat a hasty retreat, though a graceful one, not exposing as much to Lucius's critical eyes as Severus would have thought he would.

"Can you tell me why," Lucius asked, in the tones of a languid volcano, "my son should be relying on the advice and presence of _Harry Potter_?"

"For much the same reason that he relies on mine," Severus said. The tea had finished, and he pulled out a pair of cups, choosing the one for Lucius that had no handle and would have to be cradled in the palm. It was a simple revenge, and one that Lucius might not even notice if his rage was deep enough, but it amused Severus to think of him going home with minor burns on his hand.

Sure enough, Lucius took the cup but stared at him with eyes that were all too clearly thinking of something else. "I do not like this, Severus," he said. "My son should be living under my roof, under my control."

Severus could have laughed aloud if he had thought it a wise or judicious expression of emotion. The spells that he had added to the shop to strengthen a client's desire to tell the truth were working. Lucius would not have added the last phrase if he were uninfluenced. Severus sipped his own tea and shook his head. "Draco is of age now. He has his own money, his own mind. Why should he remain where he is not wanted?"

"I would not have cast him out if he had not told me something too outrageous to be borne." Lucius set his cup down on the counter, and leaned forwards. "You held it in your power to prevent my son from becoming dependent on you, Severus. Why did you not do it?"

Severus looked him in the eye and told him the truth with perfect, vicious enjoyment. "Because I wanted him."

He would have paid more strongly for that statement than simply by seeing Lucius's snarl, he knew, but Draco and Harry came back into the shop then, and Lucius had something else to focus on. In this case, it was Harry's arm curled around Draco's shoulder and the way he half-ducked his head, whispering into Draco's ear.

Lucius rose to his feet and drew his wand.

It was the most profound mistake he could have made. Severus knew Draco's loyalty to his family. Draco might have thought that he'd hidden his unease at parting from his parents from his new lovers, but nothing was less likely with someone who had known him as long as Severus had. He had come down in the morning with the marks of sleeplessness on his face, and he would tense whenever the talk turned to family.

But this was an open threat, not words that could be set aside and disregarded as the workings of temper and nothing more.

Draco stepped forwards, his face stained with pink on cheeks and jaw. He looked absurdly young, but there was nothing juvenile about the motion with which he plunged his hand into his robe pocket to seek his wand, or the way he snarled at his father. "Come to attack Harry?" he asked, turning his body sideways so that Harry was completely shielded. For once, Harry had the good sense to stand still, though Severus was sure he touched Draco supportively, out of sight. "Because you can never possibly accept that I can make my decisions _on my own_, without being swayed by someone else?"

"Do not be ridiculous, Draco," Lucius said coldly. "You are swayed by everyone and everything around you. I have heard that the former Miss Parkinson is back in England. You will doubtless be running away to her as soon as she calls on you." He paused for dramatic effect. "Do your lovers know about that?"

Draco's pinkness faded. He blinked twice. Then he said, "You don't really respect me at all, do you? You think of me as a child." His tone was full of wonder.

"What decisions have you made since the war that have merited respect?" Lucius demanded.

"I think a better question might be, what decisions did you make before and duringthe war that merit my respect?" Draco took a step forwards, surveying his father as if from a height. If Severus didn't miss it, he was sure that Lucius hadn't, either, and sure enough, his hand tightened on his wand. "You decided to be a Death Eater," Draco continued. "You decided to give away the Malfoy pride and prestige in service to a man who broke all his promises to us. And since the war, all you've done is think and talk about grandchildren, as though your life and mine and Mother's are all done already, as if we're only worth what we can produce and reproduce instead of what we can do."

_Ah, now you have drawn him to respond, _Severus thought as he watched Lucius flush. _He has a weakness for argument. I did not realize you knew that._

"I will give you money," Lucius said, softly but intensely. "I will give you a home, if you wish to come back to Malfoy Manor. I ask only that you marry and stay faithful to your wife in public. I ask that you have at least one child to follow us, and that you treat that child well and let your mother and I have our part in raising it. You can have pleasure, Draco. But you must do your duty alongside it."

Draco smiled, a sharp expression that nevertheless quivered at the edges. By craning his neck slightly, Severus thought he could see Harry rubbing circles on Draco's back. _Good. He needs the support, now. He is more fragile than he thinks he is. _"I've decided I'd rather have all pleasure," Draco said. "Hence my business and my lovers."

"It is _obscene _that you are living with two men, one of whom is not fit to touch your boots," Lucius said, abruptly switching tactics. Severus wondered idly which of them was supposed to beg to polish Draco's boots, him or Harry. "Have you thought about how your friends are laughing at you? They are concealing their laughter right now, perhaps out of kindness, but they will do it openly soon."

Draco took another breath. Then he said, "I do wish that we could have parted another way, Father. But tramping in here like this and demanding I come back isn't going to let you win."

Lucius, typically, seized on the notion of reconciliation and treated it as weakness, rather than realizing that Draco was negotiating from a position of strength. "I have made the offer," he said. "You have only to come to the Manor and swear to leave _them _behind. We will discuss terms then." He turned and strode to the door with his robes snapping and billowing around him.

Draco opened his mouth once as if to call him back, but Severus caught Draco's eye and shook his head. Draco looked at the floor and rubbed his mouth. His mind would be racing in several directions, Severus knew, but none of them productive.

The door shut behind Lucius. Severus cleaned up the teacup that Lucius had left, giving Harry the first chance to speak comforting words. He was better at them.

"You did marvelously," Harry murmured. His voice was muffled, as if he were kissing Draco lightly while he spoke. Severus had a new reason to keep his eyes on the Cleaning Charms, then. He was not sure how he would react if he turned about and saw them doing that in the middle of the shop, in broad daylight. "You told him the truth, that you wanted to be on good terms with him but wouldn't give us up to do so. It was magnificent."

Draco gave a little moan, and Severus no longer doubted that they were kissing. He steadied himself against the counter before he turned.

Harry was almost bending Draco backwards, so close did he press, his hands locked on either side of Draco's jaw. From the way their mouths worked, they were tongue to tongue, and from his soft whimpers, Draco was enjoying every minute of it.

Harry caught Severus's eye and extended one hand.

Severus made sure to lock the door, so that no one would intrude into this enjoyable but all too public activity, and then went to join them.

Draco and Harry reached out to him at the same time. Hands slid against his skin, tangled in his hair and yanked hard enough to make him hiss, and curved slyly down his hips until Severus pulled them sternly back up towards his face. Harry was the first to kiss him in turn, that Severus did remember, but Draco was not far behind, flinging himself eagerly into this reassurance of bodies and souls so that he did not need to regret what had happened between him and his father.

Severus let them feel his erection, but pulled back and shook his head when Harry reached down to hold it. "Not here," he said.

"Then let's go home," Harry said, bold and impetuous as always, glancing back and forth between the two of them with his eyes flaring. "Who's going to stop us? We own the business. We can make what decisions we want about it."

"I agree," Draco said. He gave Severus a clear, commanding look that was somewhat lessened by the kissed and swollen state of his lips. "Come home with us."

"We have a responsibility," Severus said. He could hardly speak. His tongue was thick in his mouth, his body warm and thrumming with a rhythm he had not felt so strongly even when they first made love. "We have promised our clients that we will be open at certain hours of the day, and we must maintain that, or suffer—"

"I know, I know," Harry said impatiently. "But there's no reason that we can't take time off just _once_. We won't make a habit of it." He touched Draco's head, his eyes unexpectedly sober as he looked at Severus. "I think we need it today."

_I am a fool. _Severus was surprised that he had not thought of that himself. Draco was struggling to hide intense need; it would hurt his pride to speak of it, but of course he would require reassurance after such a confrontation, and sex was the best way to give it to him.

"I will come," Severus said.

Draco gave him a delighted look and a deft rub with his leg against Severus's groin, causing his hips to jut forwards without his consent. "Yes, you will," Draco said.

*

Harry had a definite goal this time as he came through the door as part of a circulating storm of bodies, hands, legs, and arms: keep Draco from thinking about what had happened and analyzing his every word and debating what he should have done differently. Severus had warned him that Draco was prone to that, but Harry could have guessed it himself. Draco had that look on his face after Lucius left that Harry knew he used to get after he fought with one of his friends or struggled with the Ministry.

So he turned around when they'd got through the door and kissed Draco full on the mouth, pushing his tongue in until Draco almost choked, then pulling it back until he could barely and delicately touch Draco's front teeth. Draco moaned in surprise, tilting his head back, and then Severus seized him from behind and linked powerful arms around his waist.

His hands were clasped, Harry saw when he glanced down, and rubbing back and forth with severe intent across Draco's groin. Draco bucked forwards and whined deep in his throat.

Harry's hunger came along just then and upset his reason.

With Severus's help, he yanked Draco's trousers down, followed by his pants, which didn't have the good sense to follow the trousers the way they should have. Then he reached out and slid his fingers delicately up and down the underside of Draco's cock.

"_Harry_," Draco breathed. Harry looked up and saw Draco's eyes as all gleaming pupil, they were dilated so much. "Have you ever done this before?"

"Nope," Harry said cheerfully, and leaned forwards to breathe on Draco's erection. It twitched.

"Go slowly," Severus whispered. "Tease him. Taunt him. Use your breath to make him long even more for what comes after the initial burst, and watch as he grows more and more desperate for it."

"What are you doing?" Draco asked, panting, as he threw his head back against Severus's shoulder. His eyes had shut, but only for a moment; then Harry saw them blink open again, as if he were incapable of commanding them. "I need—comfort, don't you think? After—what I went through?"

"This will comfort you more than anything else he could do," Severus whispered into Draco's ear. Draco moaned, head lolling as though his neck had suddenly gone boneless. Harry stared in fascination, and Severus caught his eye and nodded reassurance. "Do it, Harry."

*

Draco wasn't surprised when Harry immediately leaned forwards and gave it his best effort. Who wouldn't, after hearing the iron in Severus's soft voice?

But that didn't mean he was any happier about being teased—

Or so he'd like to pretend. In reality, when he felt the gentle, warm flutter of Harry's breath around the head of his cock, Draco's muscles spasmed and he would have fallen if Severus wasn't holding him up. It was the taunt, the anticipation, that made him do that. He wanted what he wasn't going to get (right now). He wanted to buck forwards into the warmth of Harry's mouth, and knew he wouldn't be permitted to do so.

Severus did know exactly what would please him best.

Severus breathed on his ear, then nipped it. Draco wanted to faint, or fall, or collapse. Severus's firm arms, however, held him up too much for that to happen, but Draco did manage to turn his head so that Severus could reach his ear better, and whimper. He hoped the whimper was as sweet and pathetic as he wanted to make it.

It must have been. Severus rubbed his cock against Draco's arse, and Harry gasped and dared a single greedy lick to Draco's balls, though gone so swiftly that Draco wasn't really sure he'd felt it. Draco smiled, and he knew the smile was probably delirious and strained, but he didn't care. He had his own power in this situation, the only kind of power he needed right now.

"Do you know how delicate you look?" Severus said into his ear.

Draco stretched his neck, but didn't bother responding, although his erection might have given an extra throb. He knew Severus was going to tell him, and he wanted that. He reached up and ran a faltering hand along Severus's arm, before Severus snatched it away and bound it to his chest with Draco's other hand.

"You are not," Severus said. He was breathing fast, making his words ragged and uneven, and a surge of triumph passed so quickly through Draco that for a moment he thought he would come in spite of Harry's gentleness. "I have in my arms the young man who walked away from his parents when they were too demanding, who bent under the Dark Lord but never broke, who decided to wake himself up and leave his weak life and love affairs behind when something greater beckoned. But you _look_ so delicate."

Draco gave an encouraging little thrust. Severus leaned back and said, "Not yet, Harry." Harry's mouth, which had surrounded Draco whole for a moment and which was so hot that he thought it would sear him, retreated.

Draco moaned again, but his heartbeat spiked and his whole body shuddered. Riding the edge, he felt as though he could last forever, as though he didn't _need _to come. He just needed to feel Harry and Severus, and listen to Severus talk.

"I could break your wrists with a twist," Severus said, and jerked on them so that Draco could feel the bones sliding against skin, against muscle. "I could break your legs. Your collarbone would shatter if pressed on. I could _hurt _you."

Draco moaned again, hoping Severus would understand the message of his deep and urgent desire. He didn't want to be hurt, not really; he had had enough of that after watching the torture that the Dark Lord made him put other people through. But the _threats_, knowing that he was important enough to someone else to merit threats…

They affected him in the same paralyzing way Pansy's letter had, but also in a far more pleasurable one.

"Now, Harry," Severus said, in a tone so much the same as his threats' tone that Draco didn't register the changed message for a minute.

And a minute was all it took for Harry to surge down, capture Draco in his lips, and suck until Draco felt as if his orgasm would be drawn out of him by main force.

And soon it was.

Draco came with a shudder and a cry that was silent despite his will to voice it, his skin aching as if he had sunburn, one partner's mouth around him and the other rubbing against him as if he would come almost as soon as Draco did.

*

When he felt Draco go limp, Severus lowered him gently to the floor. He went with him in the next instant, cradling Draco's head in his lap and running his fingers through the soft, fine hair. Draco turned his head so that his lips rested against Severus's leg and whispered something that Severus could feel better than he could hear it.

Harry pulled his head from Draco's groin with a wet "pop" and blinked at both of them as if he didn't know what to do next. Strings of white leaked from the corners of his mouth. His green eyes were wide and so blown that Severus thought he would do what he was told in the next few minutes without hesitation.

Now _there _was an idea.

"Come here," Severus said quietly, extending one hand to Harry, and Harry crawled over to him, licking his lips as he went.

Severus shifted Draco so that he could reach his wand and conjured a pile of cushions beside them, in brilliant colors that Draco would be ashamed of reclining on when he came to his senses. When he moved Draco's head to them, Draco opened his eyes, blinked, and focused on the two of them.

Hunger came into his face, but of course he was far too spent at the moment to do anything about it. Severus smiled at him, a smile he knew was cruel and delightful, and cradled Harry's head as he leaned in to kiss him.

"You shall have pride of place among us even now, Draco," Severus said, and darted out his tongue to lick the inside of Harry's mouth, his tongue and cheeks, and absorb Draco's taste. "What do you wish us to do? Command us." He reached down and touched Harry's erection, feeling Harry gasp and lift his hips as if he'd never been touched before. "As you mentioned, you need comfort."

Harry gulped and wriggled as if he would make some sort of objection to this, but when Severus looked steadily into his eyes, he saw nothing but glad compliance. Smiling again, Severus pulled Harry towards him and held him still, one arm around his neck, one hand on the back of his head, waiting for Draco's instructions.

"I want you to kiss him again," Draco said at last. His voice was thin and thready, but he spoke demandingly enough. "As though you aren't going to let him breathe, as though nothing matters in the world but him."

Harry's garbled half-protest was drowned as Severus leaned in to do as Draco had asked—and as Harry needed, though Severus doubted he knew that.

Harry's mouth was hot and sour and salty with a faint taste of Draco, but Severus thought that he had scrubbed that out thoroughly within a few minutes. Then there was warmth left, and stickiness, and a melting softness that seemed to come from Harry himself rather than anything he'd swallowed. Severus bore him backwards until Harry caught himself against the wall and braced his elbows there.

Meanwhile, Harry returned the kiss with interest, rotating his tongue and uttering tiny sighs that made Severus go quietly mad. He lifted one hand and stroked Severus's elbow, the lightest touch of a tingling caress. Severus groaned, and tried to mask the sound with a soft growl. Harry chuckled.

"I think," Draco drawled, "that I'd like to see you suck Severus too, Harry."

Harry blinked and drew slowly back, licking at Severus's lips one more time before they parted. He nodded briskly to Draco, while Severus enjoyed the sight of his flushed cheeks, his mussed hair, his dazed eyes. "All right. Should I undress him, or not?"

Severus glanced at Draco. He sprawled on the cushions, using two fingers to toy with his nipples, while his other hand occasionally caressed his spent cock. When he saw Severus watching, he lifted his eyebrows with a smirk and flicked his tongue in a beckoning curl.

_I can have both of them, _Severus reminded himself sternly, against the immediate impulse to crawl over. _This isn't the only time it will happen._

"Good question, Harry," Draco said, eyes alight with the pleasure of giving the order as much as the pleasure of touching himself, or Severus did not know him. "Undo his robes, trousers, and pants only as much as you need to, without removing them. And don't spill anything on his clothes, hmmm? He _does _so hate that."

Harry moaned, while Severus himself was too breathless to make a sound. He nodded and lay back, spreading his legs. He would have touched his clothes himself, in order to get them open more quickly, but Draco's orders had been clear: Harry was the one who had to accomplish this task.

Harry's eyes flickered shyly from Severus's face to his own hands, as if he assumed that Severus had something to object about already, before he ducked his head and went to work. His fingers were nimble and fast, and Severus closed his eyes, the better to enjoy the sensation of Harry's knuckles brushing against him.

He hissed when his erection pushed out into the open air. It felt both throbbingly hot and bitterly cold as the protection of the cloth fell away.

Harry solved that problem by lying full-length on the floor and taking it into his mouth as though he were starving for it.

Severus knew the next few minutes were not coherent wholes in his memory, the way they should be. His brain broke apart and came back together in casually connected patterns of red, black, and white. His breath whistled and wheezed through his lungs, and yet at the same time it seemed to himself as if he breathed perfectly calmly. He was soaring with pleasure and drowning so far underwater that no one could rescue him.

All because of Harry's hesitant tongue and mumbling mouth.

He was no expert in blowjobs; Severus knew that the moment Harry took him inside. But that didn't _matter_. He had eagerness to make up for the loss of experience. He turned his head sideways and hummed and swallowed too often and did all sorts of things that someone who had more experience with this would never attempt.

Severus tried not to break apart too badly, but the moments before his orgasm picked him up and dashed him to the floor, where he shattered like a Potions vial. He knew he was coming, and he could hear Draco's soft encouragement and Harry's grunts and feel his own pleasure stabbing him like a series of well-coordinated knives and _ah_, it was too _much_.

When he could return to something like the normal world, he opened his eyes in time to hear Draco say, "Yes, Harry, touch yourself," in greedy tones, wet and slurping.

Harry touched himself with the same noises, his head tilted back, his voice emerging only in a high-pitched whine. Severus didn't know if his cock, peeking thick and flushed from his hand, was smeared only with precome. Harry could have taken the chance to use saliva or even a lubricant while Severus was drifting in his white haze. He didn't know.

_Next time, _Severus assured himself as he leaned forwards, determined not to miss a detail, _I will know._

Harry shuddered and began to breathe in measured bursts, as if he assumed that would make matters easier to deal with. It didn't. His voice rose and rose in its whine, until Severus was shocked not to hear the sound of shattering china, and he was gulping and twisting as if in torment.

"Faster," Draco whispered.

Severus had thought Harry was going as fast as he could, but apparently not, given the way Harry began to squeeze himself regularly and whip his hand back and forth along his length, head to base and base to head, so quick that Severus began to lose track of what he was touching at the moment.

"Soon," Draco said, and then, "_Now_." Severus glanced at him and saw that he was holding one of his nipples down, pinning it to his chest, while his face glowed with red and white, like an apple.

Harry cried out, a burst of sound as uncoordinated as his breaths or his strokes, and his come sprang out from him, a shower on his knees and chest and legs, and Severus saw with a thrill what he had not consciously registered before, that Harry was still clothed.

"Look at that," Draco said, forcing the words out around pants that should have made them less impressive, but somehow did not. "You managed to keep Severus clean, but not yourself. I think you should clean it up."

Harry grinned and lifted his hand to his mouth, flicking his tongue out to lick his fingers. Severus would have liked to look away; certainly the painful excitement he was feeling now, which made his heart squeeze as if it were about to stop beating, couldn't be healthy for a man of his age. But his eyes stayed stubbornly where they were until Harry had finished cleaning off his fingers, even nipping the last milky drops from under the nails.

"V-very good," Draco said.

Harry seized his wand and cleaned up the rest with a flick and a Vanishing Charm. "I wasn't going to clean the _whole _thing," he said mildly, when Draco looked outraged. "Especially when I've already had more than either of you."

Severus leaned across to him for another kiss. Harry kissed enthusiastically back, then crawled over to Draco's cushions and kissed him.

"You know," Harry said, sitting behind Draco and stroking his hair while smiling at Severus, "I just realized something."

"What is that?" Severus asked, and then frowned. He had not meant for his voice to come out like that, exhausted and sated, though now that he thought about it, it would have been strange if his voice had sounded like anything else.

"Our life together," Harry said, "is never going to be boring."

Draco turned his head and kissed Harry's fingertips, and Severus had to touch both of them.


	11. Chapter 11

Harry stepped out of Gladrags, smiling and bouncing the package of robes in his arm. It was an early birthday present for Draco. Harry intended to tell him about it, but not what it was or where it was hidden, and torment him about it until the fifth of June arrived.

He paused when he saw Severus waiting for him. He had told his partners where he was going, but the trip had been short enough that he had expected both of them to still be tending to the shop. Wondering if something had happened to Draco and that was the reason Severus had come, Harry quickened his step.

Sure enough, Severus's face was pale and stricken. Harry put a hand on his arm and ignored the curious stares. Severus had been brave enough to come into Diagon Alley in the first place; Harry wouldn't show less courage. _If someone notices, they can report us to the papers. We have nothing to hide._

"What is it?" he whispered. "Another attack?"

Severus shook his head. "Not at all," he said, but the sneer in his voice didn't fool Harry. He had learned to distinguish between sneers that Severus meant for other people and those he directed at himself. He held out a square of parchment.

Harry narrowed his eyes. He suspected he knew what this was, and a quick glance confirmed it.

_Death Eater…blood traitor…killed Dumbledore…not fit to live…should have left you to rot…wouldn't buy one of your potions if my life depended on it…_

Harry rested his hand more heavily on Severus's arm and glanced up at him. "You haven't got one of these in a long time," he said quietly. "Is that what makes this so hard for you to deal with?"

Severus glared at him a moment with eyes and lips pinched. "I think I am entitled to resent such accusations, no matter how often or in what form they come," he said. His voice was little more than a breath, but Harry could still hear the pain in it. He had expected Harry to be fully on his side, and it hurt him to think that Harry wasn't.

Harry shook his head and ran his hand soothingly up and down Severus's sleeve. Yes, people were staring now. Harry didn't care. The people who would be most affected by this revelation—his friends and Draco's family—knew about this already. For the rest, there would be rumors for a long time before the truth came out, and even then, Harry didn't expect everyone to believe it. He would fight to keep his privacy from reporters who harassed him, rather than random people on the street. "I only meant that you seem more thrown off-balance than I had thought you would be. I had expected more contempt for whoever sent this."

Severus took a deep breath and nodded. "Yes," he said. "Thanks to the wards that you put up at the shop, this letter should not have been able to get through. But it did."

"So we have a more powerful enemy," Harry said, picking up the letter and turning it thoughtfully over. Of course, the handwriting and the ink and parchment didn't reveal any particular clues, and there was no signature.

"Yes," Severus said, in a voice low and tight with fury. "And if I do not know who it is, then I _cannot _protect you and Draco. You can imagine how this infuriates me."

Harry looked up in surprise, his lips parting before he thought about it. Severus gave him a sharp glance and looked away, beginning to stride as if he would Apparate back to the shop the moment they reached a suitable spot.

Harry followed him, his head spinning. That Severus would not only fear for him and Draco, but fear that his power might not be enough to protect them—

Yes, Harry knew that strong, half-irrational panic. He had felt the same way when he looked at Ron and Hermione during the war and wondered what would happen if Voldemort got hold of one of them. It was a reason he had tried to leave them behind rather than take them with him on the Horcrux hunt.

He had not really expected Severus to feel it.

Severus thrust a stiff, impatient arm at him, and Harry let himself be Side-Along Apparated. Then he spun Severus around when they came into the alley behind the shop and seized him, kissing him deeply.

Severus didn't fight back, even though someone could turn the corner and see them; Harry thought he was too stunned. When Harry drew back from the kiss, licking his lips and thinking regretfully of the hours of work ahead, Severus whispered, "Why did you do that?"

"Because you care so much about us," Harry said, smiling at him and wishing times were better so that Severus would be able to concentrate solely on his words and not what had prompted them. "I want to show you that I care just as much."

Severus stared at him. Then he said, "The way I care for others is not the way that you do, Harry."

"I know." Harry bowed his head in a little, half-mocking bow, and then turned and opened the door of the shop.

"Neither is it comparable," Severus said, following him. He sounded as though he didn't know whether to get angry or not, as if he wasn't even sure whether Harry was disagreeing with him.

"I don't know," Harry said, picking up his wand and checking the wards on the shop automatically to make sure nothing had changed while he was out. A white star of light flared in the corner of Severus's section, and Harry raised an eyebrow and went forwards to investigate it. "It would be hard to weigh two amounts of love and make sure they were exactly the same."

"I will trust you not to extend the metaphor to ridiculous extremes," Severus said, voice hard now.

"You were the one who chose the metaphor, not me," Harry pointed out mildly, and tapped the white star with his wand. It whirled in place and then flew up in front of him, expanding until it made a bright pool not unlike a Pensieve. In it shone an image of a wizard in a dark cowl and robes working against Harry's wards. Harry studied it.

"Who is that?" Severus demanded behind him in a low voice.

"_What _is it?" Draco added from his doorway, while a young, red-haired witch he must have served hurried away, glancing nervously over her shoulder. _Another story to add to the Savior's capabilities, _Harry thought, rolling his eyes. "I didn't know you could do things like that."

"There's lots of things I can do that you don't know about," Harry murmured, smiling wickedly at him. "You ought to see the things I do with my tongue sometimes."

Draco's eyes glazed over. Harry chuckled.

Severus prodded him in the back of the shoulder with one bony finger. "Have you any way of finding out who this is?" he asked, in a freezing voice that said he didn't think such banter appropriate for the shop and would find a way of exacting vengeance later. "So disguised, this evidence appears useless to me."

"No it isn't, Mr. Impatient," Harry said, and heard Severus choke. "There aren't a lot of people with the skill to get through my wards, especially if they did it all at once—and the image would be multiplied if they'd come here more than once. That means—"

The figure in the image shot out its wand and stroked it down the side of the shop. One of Harry's wards wilted like a flower given too much water to let the wand through.

"_Ah-ha,_" Harry said, and felt his heart pounding the way it used to when he was finding out the solution to some mystery Voldemort had left. He touched the star with his wand, and the image froze. Harry nodded to Draco and Severus. "Now it will replay this particular moment whenever I ask it to, like a Pensieve."

"The face isn't showing," Draco said, coming forwards to look over Harry's other shoulder. Harry suppressed the impulse to wriggle back into his lovers. Severus was already upset, and Harry didn't want to push him.

"No," Harry said. "But there aren't many people with the skill to get through my wards, as I said. I know most of the ones who have it. And I know their wand movements." He nodded to the image, and it began to replay the particular stroking wand movement that had identified the criminal to Harry. "That one belongs to a ward-maker called Nestor Irumen. He was jealous of me when I set up my own business, and insisted to my face that I couldn't be trusted with such powerful magic. That move is a particular signature of his to peel wards back."

"Why would he have sent a letter to me," Severus asked, "if it's you he's after?"

Harry glanced at him. "He also has a problem with Death Eaters," he said quietly. "He was particularly outraged when it turned out you'd been on the Order's side. He sent letters to the newspapers for months demanding that you be put in Azkaban."

Severus nodded tightly, but Draco asked, "Did someone in his family get killed by Death Eaters?"

Harry shook his head. "He idolized Dumbledore. He felt very strongly that Severus's punishment should have been death for that, but he knew not many people would agree with him. Azkaban was a compromise."

Severus made a choked sound suddenly and turned away.

Draco gave Harry a hard look and moved after Severus, murmuring soft words without touching him. Harry winced. He ought to have remembered what it had cost Severus to cause that death and spoken more kindly, but he had been caught up by the solution to the mystery and talked as if he was still in Hogwarts.

"Severus," he said. "I wish—" But it was no use saying that he wished it could have been different, because that was certainly something Severus wished every day, and Harry's wishing could never be as strong as his, or make any difference. "I'm sorry," he said instead.

Severus nodded, staring coolly into the distance, and then turned around. "Can this Irumen be arrested?" he asked.

Harry considered that carefully. He didn't know if anything in the letter Severus had received was bad enough to be considered a threat; he hadn't got to that part of his Auror training before he quit the program. But it was possible. He nodded. "We'll talk to the Aurors, the way we did about Estep's attack. Or I'll go and talk to them," he added, when he had exchanged a glance with Draco. "You should go home and relax."

"I'll come with you," Draco said at once.

"Thank you," Severus said stiffly. "But I would rather go alone. Draco, remain here and run the shop. We owe it to our clients not to simply disappear without warning."

Harry opened his mouth to protest, but Severus had already stalked to the front of the shop and opened the door with a push of his arm. When Harry leaned out the window, he had already Apparated.

"Let him go, Harry," Draco murmured. "I think he needs to take out his rage far from either of us right now."

Harry nodded. "At the same time," he said. "I don't think we should leave him alone for too long. I'll tell the Aurors all we know about the letter and Irumen, which shouldn't take that long, since we'll have to leave it up to them to do something about it. Then I'll come back here and strengthen the wards. And then we'll go home."

A certain twist in his voice must have given him away, because Draco looked at him curiously. "What are you planning?"

"What did you and Severus do for me, after I'd had that fight with Estep?" Harry countered softly.

Draco frowned and shook his head. "I don't think we should do that, Harry. That kind of comfort was right for you, but Severus might find it patronizing."

Harry smiled. He felt half-giddy, which he supposed was part of his anger against Irumen, which he probably wouldn't get a chance to express in any other way. "But a different kind might work?"

"Maybe," Draco said, bracing his arm on the wall and looking at the door as if he wanted clients to come in and distract them from this uncomfortable conversation. "I wouldn't want to take chances, though."

"There's one thing neither of you know," Harry said, as patient as he could be when that restless dizziness still spun through his head. "Before I decided to date you, I only dated women."

"I knew that," Draco said, peering at him. "Or I thought I knew that. With all the lies in the papers about whom you dated and for how long, it was hard to tell."

Harry sighed. Draco wasn't pouncing on the obvious revelation the way Harry would have expected him to. "What that means is that you're the first men I've been with sexually."

Draco raised an eyebrow. "And?" he asked, but he got it before Harry could go through a potentially humiliating explanation. His face changed color, and he looked at Harry as if he'd never seen him before. "_Oh_," Draco whispered. "Yes. There are—certain things that you've never done before."

"Exactly," Harry said. "I was thinking that perhaps that would make a better kind of comfort for Severus than what you did for me."

Draco looked torn between laughter and an outright stare. "I—Harry, you're offering Severus your virgin arse to make him feel better?"

Harry raised an eyebrow. "You've already told me that the slow, romantic sort of date you gave me isn't right for him. And I doubt he'd enjoy being in charge of the sex if it _also _meant that he would come uncontrollably, the way it happened to you." Draco flushed, and Harry had to stop himself from leaning forwards to capture Draco's mouth. "So, yes, I think he'd like this better. And it's not really because I think it'll heal him or any nonsense like that," Harry had to add. "It's because I want to show him that there are people who care for him, who trust him. He'll probably be thinking that if only Dumbledore hadn't trusted him so much, this wouldn't have happened. He needs to be reassured that some people actually know the truth of the situation, unlike Irumen, and value him anyway."

Draco's expression shifted again, so that it was even odder than it had been before. "Harry…" he said, and his voice trailed off. Then he sighed and rubbed his forehead. "That just might work, actually."

Harry grinned. "And you thought I was an idiot."

"I haven't thought that since you took up with us. That proves that you've had _one _good idea in your life, at least." Draco leaned forwards and kissed Harry, sliding a hand along his cheek in a way that made Harry sigh and lean in even closer. But Draco stepped back and shook his head. "If we're going to put that plan of yours into operation, you should go to the Aurors."

Harry nodded, made sure that he had the threatening letter with him, and then walked outside the shop to Apparate. He was still grinning, his cheeks flushed, and at first he thought it was because of Draco's kiss.

But then he realized that he was thinking of what would happen tonight, and anticipating it with a greedy kind of tenderness that made it hard to think of what he had to do before then.

_I don't know if it's going to work out. I didn't realize that I was ready for this yet. But it's a risk I want to take._

*

Draco rolled his eyes as he locked the front door of the shop and slung his cloak over his shoulders. He'd had numerous customers today, and nearly all of them had assumed that he would give them things for free simply because Severus and Harry weren't present. They were astonished to find that Draco knew how to spot someone trying to get a bargain for nothing, and hard haggling skills of his own.

_It's those years I spent doing nothing in particular, I reckon, _he thought, as he made sure the boxes containing their Galleons were locked, and hefted the bag he was going to bring home. They divided their money each night, so any thieves who attacked the house or the shop wouldn't get it all even if they were successful in the attack. Draco thought most of it would have been safer in Gringotts, but Severus wanted to have at least some money available to him, and Harry didn't trust the bank's protections, for some reason. _They had reputations from the war, and then jobs. What did I have? A reputation as a coward, and then someone who bounced from bed to bed._

Draco shook his head, knowing his mouth was curled to the side in an impatient way. Well, he had done this best to change the state of things in the last few months, and anyone who didn't at least faintly respect him now probably never would.

The back door opened, and Draco heard Harry's footsteps on the floor. "Draco?" Harry called.

"Still here." Draco nodded to him and cast a Lightening Charm on the heavy bag of coins.

Harry grinned at him. He looked tired, but not as beaten-down as he had the day after he took Estep to the Ministry. "I've already strengthened the wards, so I think we should go home. Lean on my arm?" He offered it to Draco with a flourish.

Draco accepted, all the while wondering if he ought to tell Harry of the doubts that had crept into his mind over the last few hours. Severus nursed his grief in private, and that hadn't changed since they got together. He had wanted to be involved in Draco's confrontation with Lucius and in Harry's with Estep and his friends, but that didn't mean he would welcome the same attention. They could be making a horrible mistake by going to him and offering it.

But looking at Harry's quietly determined expression, Draco doubted Harry would listen even if he explained.

Besides, Draco thought as they left and Harry Side-Along Apparated him home, there was something he hadn't thought about before. Maybe they would make a mistake and hurt Severus, which Draco would hate; Severus had been hurt enough in his life. But it was also possible that they could do something like that, and that Severus would still understand and forgive them.

_When I was sleeping with whoever I liked, one mistake was enough to end it. I wouldn't stay with someone who offended me or cheated on me. But this time…what we have is stronger than that. _

_I think. I still wouldn't want to test it._

But Harry was strong enough to do so, and Draco would gladly follow in his wake.

When they arrived home, Draco knew where Severus was immediately. The brooding silence that spilled out of the house was centered on the library. Harry glanced towards the door and nodded, then smiled at Draco.

"If you want to put the Galleons away, I could talk to him," he suggested quietly. "It might help if he knows that this is _my_ crazy idea. Then he won't blame you if it goes wrong."

Draco blinked. _I don't think he even realizes that he's offering to take the risks anymore. Yes, some parts of his heroic persona are a joke or exaggeration, but this isn't._

"No," Draco said, and even managed to keep his voice light. "Why would I want to give you two a chance to have sex without me?"

Harry stared at him with his lips slightly parted. Then he began to smile. Draco tried to pretend that he didn't know the meaning of that smile, but he must have failed, because Harry punched him lightly in the shoulder and said, "You're not nearly as Slytherin as you pretend to be, sometimes."

Draco opened his mouth to refute that indignantly, but Harry grabbed his hand and started tugging him towards the library. "Come on, put the Galleons down," he said, and swung Draco's arm hard enough that he had no choice. The bag plummeted to the floor with a loud clang.

_Well, at least this means we're not sneaking up on him, _Draco thought, as Harry paused dramatically at the library door before flinging it open.

Severus sat in a chair with a glass of Firewhisky. He glanced up at their entrance. Draco would have known something was wrong even without the somewhat bloodshot look of Severus's eyes; this was the only time he had ever seen Severus in a library without a book. "Go away," Severus said, his words still and tense, and then he stared back into his glass.

"I hope you haven't had a lot of that," Harry said, dropping Draco's hand and stalking forwards. He had an expression on his face Draco hadn't ever seen before. It was almost feral. "It would interfere with our plans."

Severus looked up again. His face was dead, but he hadn't done anything about the irritation sparking to life in his eyes, Draco thought in satisfaction. For the first time, he began to really hope that Harry's plan would work. "I am sure that you and Draco can dine without me," Severus said, his words overly precise.

"Who said anything about dining?" Harry ran his gaze up and down Severus's body. Severus actually blinked. Draco knew how he felt. "We're planning something more physical—something alcohol often interferes with."

Severus set his glass carefully aside and leaned forwards. "Do you really believe, Potter," he said, "that I am in the mood for sex after a day like this?"

"No," Harry said. Draco raised his eyebrows, and then Harry added, "But we can get you in the mood."

Severus stood up. Harry refused to back away. Draco, watching them both from the outside, could see a simmering tension building up between them that was probably a variant on the tension they had shared ever since Harry came to Hogwarts. It was a pressure and heat not available to him, and he felt a tiny bit of jealousy.

As if he had known that Draco might, Harry flicked him a brief glance and a sweet smile. It was over in a moment, so that he could turn back and give Severus the full force of his attention, but it was there. Draco felt as though he could breathe more easily, and he waited eagerly to see what would happen next.

"You are arrogant," Severus said. "Assuming that you can make anyone desire you."

"I don't know about _anyone_," Harry said, shaking his head sadly, as if not being able to cause irresistible desire in everyone he met was a problem. Draco choked. Yes, he had seen Harry be impudent to Severus before, many times, but he had never realized how much Harry could wield it like a weapon. "But I know that I can make _you_ do it."

Severus reached out and gripped Harry's right shoulder with a tightness that made Draco wince just watching it. But Harry didn't show any sign of pain. He looked steadily into Severus's face and then stretched his neck up to kiss him.

Severus rocked back as if from a blow. "You will leave me alone to grieve in private," he said, but the words lacked the force of a command.

"Why?" Harry demanded. "People have done that for years, and you obviously haven't got much better, have you? Grieving in private can work, but it only works if you get over the grief and go on. I did. You didn't."

Draco knew his mouth had fallen open, but he wasn't sure what the appropriate response would be otherwise. No one confronted Severus Snape like this. He was feared enough that none of his students would have dared to, even if they were his private pets, the way Draco had been, or if they had a transient crush on him, the way Draco had also felt for a little while when he was a student.

You didn't…

_No one did, _Draco realized, as his eyes finally settled on Severus's expression and he saw the fire flaring back to life in him. _That's the trouble. Everyone was so intimidated that they backed away and left him alone. Maybe that's what he wanted or needed at the time, but it led to permanent loneliness. Until us._

_Until Harry had the courage to demand that he not do it._

It shamed Draco somewhat to realize that he probably would have tiptoed around Severus as well and assumed that some things were just too sacred to talk about, and waited for the moment when Severus acted normal. That had been the wrong tactic this time, but it had been habit, routine. Harry was the one who had the daring to break the routine.

"What did you say to me?" Severus whispered.

"There's nothing wrong with your ears," Harry said in a low drawl that Draco _knew _had been stolen from him, his face bright with danger and triumph. "Unless the alcohol's affected them, _too_." He threw a quick glance at Severus's groin.

Severus snarled and lunged.

In the next moment, he was pressing Harry back against the wall, kissing him so harshly that Draco feared Harry would suffocate. But Harry twined his arms around Severus's neck and kissed back, while beckoning to Draco with one hand.

Hardly daring to breathe still, Draco walked across the room and wound his arms around Severus's waist. Severus stiffened, and Draco wondered if this had been a bad idea and he should leave the two of them alone tonight.

But the way Severus twisted about and devoured his mouth in the next moment seemed to prove that he had only been surprised, and Draco relaxed into the kiss.

It was like no kiss that he had ever received, either from Severus or his other lovers. Severus bit his lips, drove his tongue into Draco's mouth as though trying to touch the back of his throat, and firmly kept Draco from kissing back as much as he wanted. He was in control, and the fact was enough to make Draco's erection, which had started when he watched Harry and Severus kissing, completely hard.

Draco tore free with a gasp and leaned his head against Severus's shoulder, closing his eyes. He heard a low chuckle from Severus and felt long fingers stroke his hair. Severus whispered, "I will show you what to do, Draco."

Draco forced his eyes slowly open; they wanted to stay shut after the kiss, but he didn't think that was a good idea. "I don't need _instruction_. I just want you to have me."

"I have a better idea," Severus said, with another kiss that made Draco want to wail in loss when he pulled back. "Harry shall have you, and I shall have Harry. I think that shall work out nicely."

Draco found it even harder to breathe. He let out a whimper. "Did Harry tell you, then?" he asked in an innocent tone, although he had been in the room for the entire conversation and knew Harry hadn't.

"Tell me what?" Severus looked back with narrowed eyes at Harry, who looked a little less dazed than Draco. _Only a little, _Draco reassured himself. And anyway, it was still enough to prevent him from telling Severus the truth before Draco did.

"That he hasn't been with any men before," Draco said simply, and left Severus to figure it out on his own, as Draco had.

Severus shuddered, and his fingers dug into Harry's hair and neck enough that Draco saw Harry wince. On the other hand, Harry wasn't complaining. Instead, he looked smugly happy to have been proven right about what it would take to bring Severus out of his grief.

"I think," Severus said, with care that Draco knew was artificial, and probably due to the bulge between his legs, "that we should show him what it's like as soon as possible."

Draco hummed and leaned in for another kiss.


	12. Chapter 12

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter. I hope you've enjoyed the story.

Severus could not believe that he felt such hunger. Only ten minutes before, no other emotion had seemed possible for that day and night, and the rest of the days and nights to come, but grief.

It was the despair that always momentarily overwhelmed him with something reminded him of the worse parts of his past. He knew it would pass in time. He only needed to be left alone to shed it like a duck shedding water from its back.

But Harry and Draco had come bursting in rudely on his grief, and now the greed to have them both was in his veins, in his blood, in his heart and head, like some subtle poison. He never took his eyes off them as he conjured a mattress in the middle of the library and then ordered them to undress.

"What, I don't even get to have a proper bed for my first time?" Harry murmured, looking up at Severus and grinning as he removed his robes, followed by his shirt and trousers. It was the grin that kept his parody of experience from being disgusting. He knew exactly what he was doing, and that grin challenged Severus to acknowledge it, and follow.

"_You _chose this when you came in here and spoke to me," Severus said, making his eyes so direct that the flush on Harry's cheeks deepened, and he turned away and finished undressing without another word.

Draco laughed. He wasn't as deeply flushed, despite the paler shade of his skin. He reached out one hand and brushed it down Harry's side, then laughed again when he jumped. "You'll see," he said. "It feels so good, it doesn't matter whether we're doing this on a bed or a conjured mattress or the floor."

"Well, obviously it matters to Severus that we're not doing it on the floor." Harry had his spirit back again. He smiled at Severus and turned to face him, proudly placing his fists on his hips. "Do you like what you see?"

Severus examined his tan skin, his thin curves of hipbones, his jutting cock, until Harry's smile faltered again. Then he said quietly, "Very much."

Harry grinned at him again and turned to display his arse.

Severus knew that he made some sort of undignified noise when he saw it, but he had not the time to listen to his own vocalizations. He reached out and grasped one of Harry's cheeks, moving it aside so that he could see the entrance more clearly.

Harry inhaled sharply and tilted his head back, ruining the purpose of _that _exercise. Severus leaned down and kissed his spine, then leaned over to kiss his shoulder blades. Slim and bony, but then, no one expected high-bred beauty of Harry Potter. What he had was more than enough.

"We're _all _interesting to look at," Draco said with satisfaction, and reached out to pull Harry into a kiss. Harry responded more than eagerly, looping his arms around Draco's neck.

Severus let that continue for a short time, feasting his eyes on the tongues that darted in and out of their mouths, and the way their lips curled, and the way their heads bowed and moved away from each other as they dueled. But the hunger was too imperative. "Draco. Lie down."

Draco nodded, broke off despite Harry's disappointed moan, and lay back on the mattress, facing up. Then he drew his knees up to his chest and pried his arse cheeks apart, which Severus had most assuredly _not _asked him to do.

Harry's moan was not disappointed this time. Severus leaned towards him and whispered, "As you have not been fucked before, I assume that you have not fucked."

"Not a man," Harry said, not taking his eyes from Draco. "Not an _arse._" He drew the word out as if he appreciated it. "I didn't—I never thought it would be appealing."

"You are going to fuck him," Severus said into his ear, enjoying the way Harry whimpered absently under his breath without seeming to realize it, "and I am going to fuck you."

Harry twisted about and blinked. "What, at the same time? How will that work?"

"With some care," Severus said, "almost anything is possible." He pointed his wand at Draco and murmured a lubrication charm, then a stretching one. He would still instruct Harry to stretch Draco, of course; it was important that he understand _all _parts of this could be an enjoyable experience, and Draco would love the attention. Draco smiled now and spread his legs, running his fingers teasingly around his entrance.

"All right," Harry said, somewhere between breathless and delighted. Abruptly, he glanced over his shoulder at Severus and frowned. "Wait. You're still dressed."

"I wonder that you noticed," Severus said dryly, and Harry flushed. Severus took pity on him, stroking the edges of his face. "Yes. I will remain this way until you are within Draco. I wish to take you on my own terms."

He thought for a moment that he might have gone too far as Harry's eyes widened, but then Harry tilted his head back again and moaned long and low, so deeply that Severus would not have been surprised if Draco did not hear it.

Severus pointed his wand at Harry's cock and murmured another lubrication charm, perhaps more hastily than he should have. Harry yelped, probably at the cold. Severus kissed his shoulder blades again.

"Use your fingers to hold him open and stretch him," Severus murmured. "The lubrication will help, but I do not enjoy using charms as the only preparation."

"And this is about what you want," Harry said, without resentment, even with relish. He knelt down and placed his fingers hesitantly in Draco, while Draco watched him eagerly and cooed encouragement.

Severus stared at him for a moment. How could anyone simply give himself up like this, and be content to be directed by another?

But he remembered that he had done it the other evening for Draco, and even for Harry, if one counted the fact that he and Draco had set up the dinner and escorted Harry into having sex with them for the first time.

Shaking his head as he imagined what Harry might be feeling, Severus leaned forwards and watched as Harry hesitantly moved his fingers back and forth, in and out of Draco. Draco shivered and hauled on his legs, which looked as if they were about to fall out of his hands. Severus lifted his wand and cast a Lightening Charm specific to Draco's legs; too much on the rest of his body and he might simply float away. Draco smiled at him and nodded to Harry.

"You can open them, and stretch me _across_," he said, his hoarse voice making that simple action sound far more erotic than some demands that Severus had heard. "I'd like that."

Harry gave Draco a brilliant, low-lidded smile, and did as he asked, at least if the motion of his hand was any indication. Draco let his head fall back and sighed, releasing his legs so that they sprawled on the mattress.

"That should—" he said, but broke off to pant as Harry traced his fingers back and forth, in and out and around. "Yes, Harry, like _that_—that should be enough."

"Er, all right," Harry said, but his inexperience was an asset in this case, as he did not seem to realize that it might hurt and so did not ask stupid questions. He pulled his fingers back and cast one more glance at Severus for permission.

Heart burning, Severus nodded.

Harry picked up his cock, stroking it with two fingers as if he couldn't help himself, and slowly slid into Draco. Both he and Draco gasped when it began to happen, but Harry louder. He shut his eyes, gritting his teeth as sweat popped out on his forehead, and the muscles in his shoulders and the cords in his neck both strained. Severus wanted to laugh aloud at the fact that he seemed to be going through more of a struggle than Draco was, but kept it to a coaxing murmur for Harry's sake. "That's it. You're doing fine. Penetrate him, now."

Harry shifted his hips as if trying to find the best direction, and Draco spread his legs further in welcome. "Yes, that's right," he murmured.

"Oh, Merlin," Harry whispered, his voice so soft that Severus could not tell whether the words were ones of shock, wonder, or excitement. He opened his glazed eyes and stared at Draco as he slid further forwards, then further. That last slide wasn't all his idea; Draco looped his legs around Harry's waist and tugged. A squeak and a squelching noise, and Harry was where he should be.

Severus stood back then and let them have their moment, as they stared at each other. Draco reached up and ran a hand tenderly across Harry's temple, his fingers sinking under the wild black hair for a moment.

"Are you all right?" Draco whispered.

Harry blinked, then blinked again, as if hoping that would make things normal. But his smile was still dazed and slid across his face as slowly as a snake. "It's warm," he said.

Draco breathed a laugh and brought his hands down so that they rested along Harry's flanks. "I should hope it's more than _that_," he said.

"Git," Harry said, his eyes already more brilliant than they had been, a smile Severus had never seen before on his face. "That's all the praise you're getting for right now. Greedy," he whispered then, in the way that told Severus his concentration was slipping, and leaned down as much as he could to nuzzle in the direction of Draco's ear. Both of them gasped. "So greedy, without end," Harry mumbled.

Severus cast the spells to disrobe himself then, when they were wrapped up in each other and becoming so sweet that they stood a chance of pulling _him_ into the inferno before he was ready. A lubrication charm on his cock and fingers, and he knelt behind Harry. He intended to enter Harry more slowly than Harry had entered Draco; if there was too much pain, he would have not one but two lovers complaining.

_Two lovers. _

Severus's fingers shook as he reached out and ran them gently around Harry's entrance. The words implied so much, not merely things that he had thought he would never have but things he had simply assumed he never _could _have.

"Oh!" Harry said then, and bobbed as if he was torn between pushing closer and pulling away. Draco groaned at the movement of Harry's cock inside him. "What—what are you doing?" Harry added, looking over his shoulder. Then his eyes widened, and he added, "Oh. You're naked."

"Extremely so," Severus said, and slid one finger inside. He could feel every moment of Harry's cautious breath-catching, his flex and the shake he gave his shoulders as if to soothe the tension inside. "And I am fucking you. We _did _agree on that, remember?"

"Oh, yes," Harry said, mumbling again as he tilted his head back. Taking that as permission, Severus moved his finger further. Harry moaned, then gasped, "Wait, Severus. What about Draco? Won't we hurt him?"

"_Now _you worry about hurting me," Draco teased, and then laughed, probably at the expression on Harry's face. Severus found it difficult to look up right now, away from the sight of his finger disappearing into Harry. "No, stupid, it's fine. We'll cast Balancing Charms if we need to."

"All right," Harry said, still uncertain, and Severus swirled his fingers in a sharp circle and added more lubricant. Harry gulped and clamped down so tightly that Severus had to wait for him to release before he could move again. "Feels," Harry said, and no more.

"Feels what?" Draco asked. "Oh, if you could see your own face," he added, half-reverently, and Severus had to look up this time.

Harry was rocking back and forth, not seeming aware that he was doing so, his eyes shut and his face mottled with a vivid red flush. The flush deepened as Severus watched, and his lips parted like a baby sucking. His head lolled back and forth on his neck, perfectly matching the pace of his rocking.

"Just _feels_," Harry said.

Severus shut his eyes and used his mental discipline—the best use he had ever found for Occlumency—to command himself not to come yet. His finger shook with undignified haste while he pushed it into and out of Harry. Harry was full-out riding it before Severus decided to add another one, apparently having decided that _feels _was good.

He jumped at the second one, as much as he could when he was inside Draco, but then made a mindless sound of approval. Severus leaned in to bite his shoulder. "What do you have to say for yourself?" he murmured. "Is it hard not to come?"

"So hard," Harry whispered, and then giggled like an idiot.

That one, Severus would give him. He ought to have thought more carefully of his word choice if he did not want it bent into an atrocious pun. He applied himself to fucking Harry with two fingers, and spread them wide, angled them further, and…

Found it.

Harry squealed, his eyes flying open. Draco laughed and embraced him with fingertips and legs, kissing his hands from the sound. "Thought you'd like that," he said. "Do you know what it is?"

"Of _course _I know what it is, don't be stupid," Harry retorted breathlessly, shoving his arse back at Severus until Severus's urge to mark it was near uncontrollable. "And you can just _shut up right now, _Draco Malfoy."

Draco's laughter was traveling back through Harry's body into Severus's. It was the most remarkable thing he had ever felt.

"And Severus can just go away and see how he likes being left wanting if he doesn't fuck me _right _now," Harry said, and cast a glance back at Severus full of such sharp challenge and promise that his cock jumped.

"As you will," Severus said, and pulled his fingers back. Harry clenched down at the loss, but then sighed as Severus began to slide into him.

"It's—bigger than they were," Harry said inanely, his head falling back but not quite coming to rest on Severus's shoulder. His eyes were blinking languidly, and he looked surprised when Severus slid to a stop. Severus lowered his head and locked his teeth into Harry's shoulder. Harry gasped and reached back with a faltering hand.

"Don't forget about me, down here," Draco said, and did something that made Harry gasp again and look at him. Then he shook his head with a smile, and a small knot of worry that had lingered in the back of Severus's mind relaxed. He had wondered how Harry would react to being between two men for the first time in his life, but it was only too obvious that he liked it and would welcome the "burden" of attending to two people at once.

Meanwhile, Severus was struggling to recover his breath and his will to move. It seemed to him that he could stay happily wrapped in Harry's overwhelming heat for the rest of his life. But Harry was making soft grunting sounds, and Draco wriggled and laughed at something that had better not be the expression on Severus's face.

"Move, already," Draco whispered.

Harry shifted backwards and then forwards, at the same moment as Severus tried to begin their conjoined movement. Harry rocked helplessly before he seemed to understand what was required: to let Severus take control. He nodded and bowed his head, locking his hands into place on Draco's hips.

_There has never been anything this beautiful, _Severus thought as he thrust into warmth, and heard the mattress he had conjured creaking and the ecstatic grunting from Draco's mouth. _There never will be again._

_Unless we do this again._

Severus was not sure he could contain the emotions that spun through him when he thought of that. He touched Harry's throat to distract himself, slipping his fingers around the base, scratching softly at the nape of his neck.

"Oh, _yes_," Harry said, with a voice so deep that Severus shuddered and drove into him out of turn. "That's the place." He gave Severus a sated smile, then turned a wondering, devoted one on Draco.

_Apparently his neck is sensitive, _Severus thought, and leaned in to get his mouth on it, splaying his hands across the naked expanse of Harry's back. Harry arched to meet his lips, and Severus bit and licked gently at first, increasing the pressure when Harry nodded and sighed. When he bit, as he had on Harry's shoulder, Harry garbled and stiffened.

"Not yet," Severus whispered to him. "You are not coming yet. I'll tell you when you're allowed."

"_Please_," Harry said, and Severus didn't know whether he was protesting against the restriction or begging for more of it. It hardly mattered.

Anything hardly mattered, or so it seemed, outside their medley of hot bodies, mingled limbs, sounds, and scents. By leaning over Harry's shoulder, Severus could see Draco's face. There was so much dazed happiness there that he wished he could reach Draco, to touch his cheeks and feel the reality of that smile. He had to settle for caressing Draco's legs where they wrapped around Harry's waist.

Draco smiled at him, then closed his eyes and gave a resounding groan.

His cock soaked his belly. Severus savored the sight, but more, he savored the pleasure that it signaled and which he could see washing around the edges of Draco's smile and back into it, rising to his eyes when he opened them.

"Why did he get to come and I—don't?" Harry asked, forcing the words out against what Severus knew must be a substantial block in his throat.

"Isn't that a good question," Severus whispered to him, stroking him, then nipping him when Harry seemed about to stop thrusting into Draco. Draco laughed, though it was such a relaxed sound that not even Harry Potter could take it as mockery, and opened his arms, sitting up, with a tremendous effort, so that he could hold Harry close.

"Thank you," he whispered to Harry and Severus at once, kissing Harry's forehead and reaching past Harry to give a fleeting touch to Severus's hand. Severus was still not close enough to touch his smile, but this was the next best thing. "I'm never going to forget this."

_Nor will I, _Severus thought, and, now that Draco was satisfied, closed his eyes and concentrated on taking Harry's virginity.

So warm, so tight. The mere knowledge that no one had fucked Harry before, that no one had slept with him like this and it was entirely new, would have driven Severus on, but the pleasure was its own incentive.

He could not grow close enough to Harry. His hands roamed up and down Harry's ribs, he pinched and squeezed and bit, and still the barriers of their skin held them apart. And still Harry grunted and gusted and squeaked, and was driven into Draco's body and allowed Severus to drive into him.

When Severus opened his eyes, he could see Draco watching him, his cheeks brilliant in their pink, his eyes filled with the same knowledge that echoed in Severus's mind, as if they were exchanging thoughts.

_A privilege. A gift._

Severus's orgasm swelled up long before he actually experienced it, making him tremble with the promise of it. He halted himself before his muscles went rigid and simply held still inside Harry, barely breathing, waiting.

For the first time that he could remember since the war, he actually lost control of his perceptions and his surroundings. Intensity exploded across his mind, his world was blank, his spine was arching, and other things were happening, but he didn't know what they were. His fingers scrabbled at Harry's shoulders, he knew they were there, but he couldn't stop himself and he couldn't open his eyes to see what damage he might be inflicting. He didn't know that he had eyes any longer.

Then it was done, and he slumped against Harry, who was whining and driving into Draco's body. Draco had lain down again, and there was a soft, mysterious smile on his face.

"Come," Severus whispered into Harry's ear.

Harry did it, perfectly and to command, a continuous stream of whimpers pouring past his lips as he thrust and used Draco without apology. Draco said, "_Mmmmmm_," a hum without beginning or end, and held Harry inside him, staring up at him with rapt eyes.

Severus closed his eyes as Harry's muscles clenched around his spent cock. He didn't know what to say, what to do.

Luckily, Harry did.

"This was—so much," he said, and when Severus looked again, it was to find that Harry was leaning back to kiss him and had stretched out a hand to Draco, who took it and hauled himself upright again.

They met in a collision of lips and tongues, and Severus's soul ached with something it did not hurt him to identify as happiness.

*

"Yes?" Harry asked, blinking at the dark-haired woman who stood on their doorstep. He thought she looked vaguely familiar, but he didn't know her, and he wasn't about to let a stranger past their wards.

The woman put a hand on one hip and surveyed him with a challenging air. "I'm here to see Draco," she said.

_Pansy. _Harry gave her a thin smile and leaned his own hip on the door. Draco was brewing in the potions lab with Severus, but there were more compelling reasons not to fetch him down. "I don't know that he wants to see you," he said.

"Why don't you let him make that decision?" Parkinson—Harry decided he would think of her that way because he didn't know her current last name—had a self-assured smile and a thin one. She studied him as though she didn't know what to make of him but was hoping that someone would tell her. "I know he's with you now, but that tends to mean little where someone like Draco is concerned."

Harry folded his arms and glared at her. "Are you implying that he would cheat on us?"

"Why not? He's always got bored before and moved on from everyone he slept with—except me." Parkinson's eyes abruptly traveled over Harry's shoulder, and she smiled more broadly. "And there he is."

Harry turned around. Both Draco and Severus stood behind him, Severus with his hands on the banister and his face sharp and blank. Draco was standing with his arms braced on nothing as if someone had tried to throw him back. Harry didn't think he was breathing.

"Hullo, Draco," Parkinson said, as simply as though she were coming back to pick up a dog she had left behind. "Here I am. I told you that you'd have me, someday." She shook her head and pushed one glossy strand of dark hair back from her face. "I didn't know you were right, then, but that's the past now."

Harry looked up in time to see Severus's mouth open. Harry shook his head frantically. He wouldn't be able to influence Draco in this, he didn't think, and Severus shouldn't try to, either. If this wasn't Draco's free choice, then things lost all their value.

Parkinson chuckled. "Such an honorable Gryffindor," she murmured, so that only Harry could hear. "I give you permission to be that way. Merlin knows that it works out better for _me_ if you are."

A soft sound cut across the room before Harry could reply—Draco swallowing. When Harry looked back at him, he was standing upright with his arms folded and a sad little smile on his face. "I _do _adore being right," he murmured, "and I almost hate to make you go away for that reason, Pansy. But it's too late."

Nothing in the world could have kept Harry from turning around to look at Parkinson's expression. She was pale, and she had lost her smile, but she still looked confident. "Don't tell me that you've picked up the odious habit of faithfulness at _this _late date, Draco," she said. "Not when I've divorced my husband for you. Not when I've finally chosen passion over all the other things that I might have chosen."

Draco shrugged. He was leaning back against Severus now, and seemed much more relaxed. "Then I won't tell you. You can figure out the results for yourself, by seeing that I haven't come to greet you."

"You _can't_," Parkinson said, in a low hiss that made Harry feel sorry for her for the first time.

"It's too late," Draco repeated. He stepped away from Severus and came up to stand beside Harry, entwining their hands. Harry closed his eyes and tried not to think of how grateful he was. "If you had come back to me a few months ago, before I changed and became the person I am now, maybe it would have worked. But even then…I don't know. A large part of the reason I was attracted to you was the hopelessness, and I'm over that now. And then there's the fact that you knew me from childhood. But Harry and Severus can also give me that gift."

Parkinson stood still with her fingers on her temple, head tilted as if she were trying to ease the pressure on her brain. Then she said, "It's too late for _you_ to hold my interest, either," and marched away.

It was so transparently a face-saving device that Harry snorted. From the way her spine stiffened, he was sure she had heard him, but she continued walking with the same measured cadence, so he reset the wards, closed the door, and turned to face his partners.

Draco immediately leaned forwards and kissed him, his tongue delving into Harry's mouth as if he were seeking some acknowledgment of the risk he had taken when he declared that he was giving up Parkinson. Harry responded immediately, twining his arms around Draco's neck and using his tongue to prove that it hadn't been a risk at all.

Severus came forwards to make it a triple kiss, and when it was done, he was the one who murmured into Draco's ear, "Are you sure that you will never regret _us_?"

Draco twisted around in their arms and stared up at him. "How could I? You've given me everything I ever wanted."

Harry laughed, because it was such a _Slytherin _thing to say and because he didn't want anyone to see that he was shaking with relief. He hadn't been sure, even now, that he could satisfy Draco, who was used to so much more.

_It's wonderful that I can. It's wonderful that he's staying._

*

"I know what kind of wizard you are. You might have everyone else fooled, Death Eater, but _I _know."

Severus did not look up from the ingredients he was arranging, this time violet petals in order of size. Instead, he reached out and ran his fingers over his wand, which lay beneath the counter and would trigger a special ward in Harry's section of the shop.

"Are you listening to me?" A pair of hands smashed down on the counter in front of him, and a scowling face thrust it under Severus's nose. "I said that you were a _Death Eater, _and I _know you_, and I'm going to make sure that everyone else in the world knows, too!"

"I assure you that I have the knowledge already," Severus said calmly, and pulled back his left sleeve to show the Dark Mark.

His assailant, a witch who had probably still been a student when the war ended, reeled back, at the same moment as Harry stalked through the arched doorway into Severus's section.

"And who's this?" Harry said, loud enough to make the glass in the shop windows hum. "Someone who thinks _again_ that you haven't paid the debt you owed, Severus?" He shook his head and glared at the witch, who was flinching from the mere impact of those brilliant green eyes. Severus knew their impact well; he settled back to enjoy it being deployed on his behalf. "I swear, people get stupider by the month." Harry paused, then added, "No, make that by the _hour_."

"He's a Death Eater!" whined the witch, blonde hair sticking to her forehead in a way it hadn't just a moment before. "You shouldn't be here with him."

"I'll decide who I should be with," Harry said, and gripped her arm, tugging her to the door. Severus knew she would have fought to the death before she would have let him or Draco do something like that, but it was bad enough to be called stupid by the Savior of the Wizarding World in front of an avidly staring bunch of people; she wouldn't make it worse by potentially hurting Harry. "And it will never be anyone you approve of, unless you change your mind about Draco and Severus."

"You call them by their _first names_?" the woman spluttered, gripping the sides of the shop door as if that would stop a determined Chosen One.

"Yep," Harry said, leaning in and smiling evilly at her. "You can imagine what else I do with them later." And he detached her hands and slammed the door in her face, then turned around and looked regally at the other customers in Severus's section of the shop. "Does anyone else want to complain about my partner?"

Everyone was suddenly, studiously involved in looking at the barrels and crates they'd been casually sorting through moments before. Harry snorted and returned to Severus, leaning over to touch his hand out of sight. "Are you all right with this?" he asked.

Severus, still bathed in satisfaction at the annihilated expression on the witch's face, nodded.

Harry lingered. "I just don't want you to feel attacked in your pride, or anything like that," he whispered.

"If my pride has been injured," Severus said, turning his head and murmuring into Harry's ear, "rest assured that I know many, _many_ ways of getting my own back."

Harry's eyes widened, and the pupil appeared to consume the rest. "Uh, yeah," he breathed. "Yeah."

Severus's hand darted down beneath the counter to squeeze the cock he knew would be hard, and he smiled to feel it stiffer than he had imagined. "Go back to your side of the shop now," he commanded in a low voice. "We'll discuss this at dinner tonight."

"Yeah," Harry said again, and then appeared to realize that people were still watching them. He pulled away, a blush staining his cheeks, and nodded awkwardly to Severus as he stumbled towards the door to his own shop.

Severus shook his head and returned to his violet petals.

*

"Is that a letter from your parents?"

Draco should have known that he couldn't hide anything from Severus. He leaned back in his chair at the table and lifted his head for a kiss. Severus obliged him and then moved around the chair, eyes intent on the letter.

"From my mother, actually," Draco said. He toyed with the intact seal and laughed shamefacedly. "I've been scared to open it."

"Do so," Severus said, and sat down on the arm of the chair, which wobbled dangerously, then straightened itself again as Severus shifted his balance. Draco had already observed that Severus knew how to use his weight very well indeed. "I am with you."

_And why does that make me feel better, instead of smaller? _Draco thought absently, but tore the letter open and lifted it to his eyes, so determined to read what there without flinching that it was long moments before he focused on the _words _themselves.

_My son:_

_Your father has informed me of his efforts on your behalf. And they are so clumsy, so lacking in tact and diplomacy, that I would not blame you if you never wanted to see a signature containing the Malfoy name again._

_But we are still part of you, Draco. And I have spent the past few weeks dealing with my realization that I would rather see you again than any hypothetical grandchild._

_With your permission, and your partners', I would like to attend dinner at your house sometime in the near future. I will not invite you back under the roof from which you were so unworthily dismissed until Lucius does it himself._

_I await your word._

_Narcissa, your loving mother._

Draco sighed and sat with his eyes shut for a long moment. He knew Severus was reading the letter over his shoulder, and he didn't mind.

"For all of mine," Severus said, "she is welcome here. I am not sure that Harry can say the same."

Draco turned his head and stared up at Severus. "Really?" he asked, genuinely surprised. "You'd let her come?"

"Of course," Severus said, staring at Draco as if he had suddenly forgotten how to brew potions. "I have never wished to part you from your family, and Lucius's stupidity is the only reason the breach has endured for so long." He ran a hand down Draco's neck, tugged a lock of his hair. "I wish to see you happy, Draco, and this will make you so."

Draco leaned his head on Severus's shoulder and said nothing, soaking in his warmth through his robe, like a ray of beaming sun.

*

"So. Harry."

Harry looked up and raised his eyebrows. Ginny sat across the table from him, but otherwise, only Ron and Hermione remained from the people who'd made up the Weasley dinner. Bill and Fleur had had to leave early to get Victoire in bed, George and Arthur had gone out into the garden for a "talk" that made Molly nervous—she'd followed to try and listen in—and Charlie and Percy hadn't managed to come. Ginny looked so serious that Harry wondered curiously what she was about to say.

"Are you happy with them?" Ginny asked.

Hermione was holding her breath, from the sound. Ron's elbow thumped down on the table as he leaned in.

Harry thought of the stiff, formal way Narcissa Malfoy had dined with them last night. He thought of the way he had fended off several threats to Draco and Severus in the last week, and they had done the same for him, once. He thought of the latest letter from Parkinson and how Draco had burned it unread.

He thought of the fire that he could feel leaping through his heart and mind and body when he thought of Draco and Severus, of the three of them together.

"Yeah," Harry said, and smiled. "Very happy."

**The End.**


End file.
